[Blog Post] An Allegory of Salvation (Koen Gheuens & Cary Rapaport)

[Searcher]

The sun was believed to rise from and set in the ocean, so water and light would be more than appropriate for both the sun's first rays and its last. If the pattern is the Ocean's waves, then your rising sun is about to plunge face first into the water. I find these patterns difficult to interpret though, also because of the fading around the edges. But if they represent water and light, then I don't see any problem. I don't think the rising sun facing one of the cliffs is a problem: we can imagine it moving and climbing towards top right (my south) so it will rise above the cliffs and appear on the horizon. Again though, I would not include these faded and unclear items into the core of my interpretation, but rising over the horizon vs moving towards the waves seems appropriate behavior for the rising and setting sun respectively.

On my view, the bunch of water and light goes from the sun, not the sun - from the ocean, but I see that we won't agree with each other. Maybe we need professional interpretation of it from the angle of explanation of such stylistic devices in the images of the late Middle Ages.

Regarding the T-O map, I am inclined to stick with what Rene wrote in another thread and see it as a symbol of the world - it might just be that. Maybe its orientation matters, but I don't know enough about T-O maps (and the way the VM uses them) to say if we can confidently use its orientation in any way. Isn't the big part on top supposed to be Asia, i.e. Orient, which would be okay with my interpretation?

If depicting a symbolically geographical division, it would be okay. I just bother that this kind of division usually was depicted as usual TO map, not inverted. I don't assert that there is no inverted TO map that means "mappa mundi", but on my observations, inverted TO map usually means division in agreement with the mythological conception: heaven - earth - underworld (as the three spheres) or sky - earth - ocean.
The latter division is formed according to the Genesis 1:26:
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”