The Lady in Black is in the shade and surrounded by darkness. This is a remarkable artistic feat but if the darkness is symbolic what is it a symbol of? If light is a symbol of truth one might expect darkness to be a symbol of evil. Could the darkness though be a symbol of God, whose ways are not our ways, who is shrouded in mystery and who strangely allows evil, even the evil signified in the blood red wall. Christian theology sees God as allowing evil so that the greater good may come, but this is quite an alarming feature in the ways of providence. As with Job he might allow countless evils destructive of one’s natural happiness. Together with the tolerance of evil, God is Himself mysterious. Theology, which making use of analogy reaches positive conclusions – “God is good” – moves to an apophatic realisation of His transcendence. To the darkness of God’s providence as it touches mortal life there is apophatic darkness which waits upon the beatific vision. There is further the truth that man’s understanding is in personal and historical development.
The human subject then has to cope with the darkness of God’s providence allowing physical and moral evil, the darkness of His transcendent nature, the darkness arising from a limited historical development – a darkness being experienced in Europe with the emergence of the reformation.
A symbol may of course, combine opposites but I sense in this picture that the darkness surrounding the lady is ultimately benign.
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