The Holy Trinity by Andrei Rublev, 1425, Moscow

One of the most oblique and enigmatic Trinity images is also among the most famous: the image of the three angelic visitors who came to Abraham under the oaks of Mamre in Genesis 18. Abraham welcomes and feeds these strangers, hence the image is known as the hospitality (philoxenia) of Abraham. Some patristic writers saw this as a veiled manifestation of the three persons of the Trinity. The visual depiction of the event occurs as early as the Via Latina catacombs, but cannot be definitely interpreted as trinitarian in intent until its sixth-century occurrence in mosaic form over the altar at San Vitale in Ravenna.

The most famous treatment of the philoxenia is of course that of Andrei Rublev, whose 1425 icon (now in the Tretyakov gallery in Moscow) may be the single most renowned Trinity image (see illustration, next page). Rublev’s interpretation of the image involves only a few minor changes from the received iconographic type: he gives greater symmetrical balance to the angels on the left and right, and he simplifies the whole composition radically, omitting Abraham and Sarah altogether. There is a vigorous ongoing argument about which angel corresponds to which person of the Trinity: one group of scholars reads the central figure as the Father, while another argues that central figure is the Son.

This evocative image may owe some of its popularity to the sheer mystery which clings to it, and to its polysemy which only intensifies with further study. It is somehow an Old Testament event, a eucharistic image, and an image of the triune God all at once. Rublev masterfully unites these multiple levels of meaning, keeping them all on the surface of the simple image. In the history of the philoxenia theme, however, other artists have apparently felt that these multiple meanings were simply too rich to confine to a single image. The evidence for this is that the image is often split into two distinct registers: one level shows the approach of the three men (and Abraham’s reverent bow before them), while the other shows the three men seated at table. This division occurs as early as the fifth-century mosaics of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, and can also be found in the late fourteenth-century in Florentine illuminated manuscripts. Thus split, the multiple levels of meaning can be parceled out between two separate scenes from the same story. Rublev’s treatment of the scene may owe some of its success to the way it resolutely binds these multiple meanings together, forcing biblical history and eucharistic mysticism to occupy the same image as the economic and immanent Trinity.