Brazen Serpent

The Brazen Serpent — the bronze snake that Moses raised on a pole in the wilderness, which healed all those Israelites who had been bitten by serpents and looked upon it — is one of the Old Testament's most theologically rich images, understood by Christian tradition as a prefiguration of the crucifixion. Watanabe's katazome rendering of this scene would place the pole and its serpent at the center of a composition populated by the stricken and the healed, the bold simplified forms of his stencil technique giving the scene the directness of an ancient icon.