Holy Trinity, Isaiah 6:3 Wall Art

Three angels around one table

The three guests sit on blocks of pale stone, each with tall cream wings folded behind the shoulders. The one on the left wears a blue mantle over white, the one in the middle a rose-red tunic with a deep blue cloak, the one on the right a golden robe with a pink drape. All three lower their heads. Their hands rest on the edge of a plain white table, and in the middle stands a single golden cup.

The words sit high on the sheet in brown script: “Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts”, with Isaiah 6:3 beneath. Nothing else crowds the paper. There is no house, no tree, no gold background, just soft shadow under the sandals and a great deal of warm white around the circle of guests.

What does Isaiah 6:3 mean?

Isaiah dates the vision himself: it came “in the year that king Uzziah died”, roughly 740 BC. He sees the Lord enthroned, the hem of his robe filling the temple, and above him the seraphim, each with six wings. The full verse reads: “And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.” In Hebrew, repeating a word is the way to raise it to the highest degree. Saying it three times means there is nothing holier.

“LORD of hosts” pictures God as commander of the armies of heaven. Isaiah's first reaction is not delight but fear, because he is “a man of unclean lips”, until a seraph touches his mouth with a live coal from the altar. The same cry returns in Revelation 4:8, and churches still sing it: it is the Sanctus of the Catholic Mass and many Protestant liturgies, and the Trisagion hymn of the Orthodox.

The composition echoes the icon painted by Andrei Rublev in the early fifteenth century, now in Moscow. Rublev drew on Genesis 18, where three visitors come to Abraham at Mamre and he serves them a meal. Many Christian writers saw in that scene, and in the threefold “holy” of the seraphim, a hint of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The single cup at the center is the table they share.

For a baptism or a confirmation

Every Christian baptism is given in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, which makes this print a fitting keepsake for the day, whether the one being baptized is an infant or an adult. It is also chosen for a confirmation, when a young person is asked to profess that faith in their own words.

In Catholic and Orthodox homes the image sits naturally near a prayer corner or a crucifix. Because the figures are quiet and the colors gentle, it also works in a study or on a stair landing, where people pass by and look up.