A JOURNEY THROUGH FAITH AND ART
How artists through time have expressed belief.
Lecture given in memory of Brenda Green by Iain McKillop - 18th OCTOBER 2014
(Full details of the illustrations can be found at the end of the lecture text .)
It has been a pleasure to prepare this lecture as a tribute to Brenda Green, a long-term member of this group and close friend. I want to try to draw together here
some of Brenda’s interests in faith, history and art. This is only a short introduction to how changes in faith through different Western cultures are reflected in their images. It’s a subject that has fascinated me for years. As well as being an art-historian I’m a professional artist painting commissions for cathedrals and churches and a priest so I regularly think through how art reflects the way people believe and how to speak into the beliefs of today rather than just follow tradition. I could give a lecture in itself on each slide I’ll be showing. But sometimes an overall view as here can help us put our own thoughts and beliefs into perspective.
1 STONE-AGE / MEDIAEVAL / MICHELANGELO We often explore the History of Art in terms of stylistic change. I’m sure many of you can distinguish and perhaps date different styles. Less often do we think about why these changes came about. Why for example did Mediaeval stylised painting and sculpture move into the greater naturalism of the Renaissance? It wasn’t just that human minds discovered perspective and anatomy and realised that the body isn’t the match-stick man of so-called ‘primitive’ art. Changes grew from human beings understanding different things about themselves, their beliefs and the world they lived in, so they recorded their world, their imagination and their faith in different ways.
2 CAVE PAINTING & VENUS OF WILLENDORF Early in human development tribes seem to have related the visual, indeed all the physical senses to spiritual impulses, and used the arts – painting, music dance in religion, magic or ritual. No one will ever know for sure the religious meaning behind cave paintings, but almost all anthropologists accept that superstition or religious was involved. In several cultures images are believed to be able to capture the spirit of the animal you want to hunt giving you power over it. You represented human beings in less detail to prevent you capturing their souls. These images appear only to have been painted on certain sacred walls of a cave, some anthropologists think these walls were closest to the womb of the earth-goddess, like this Venus of Willendorf. Such gods controlled the souls of the animals and crops on which you relied.
3 EGYPTIAN GODS Some ancient societies represented their gods as completely different from human beings. Their images suggested their varying characteristics. So the forms of Egypt’s gods represented the people’s reliance on the sun, seasons, the waters of the Nile. The discs of the sun and moon represented the rulers of the seasons, those who control the alluvial waters had the head of crocodile or hippopotamus; the jackal and vulture represented the death-bringers and destroyers, the falcon represented the all-seeing watcher from above.
Islam today of course doesn’t visualise Allah, but it has 99 titles or names of God which carry similar characteristics like the watcher, destroyer, ruler, provider.
4 DEVELOPMENT OF KOUROI AND KORE Ancient Greece moved towards the idea that the gods shared characteristics with us; similar jealousy, vengeance, lust, love. The stylistic changes in Greek Sculpture from Archaic to Hellenic then Hellenistic came from more than growing technical ability in sculptors; it accompanied changes in understanding of life, religion and the nature of gods, and what role art played in human life and religion. We can follow this development of thought through the writings of Pythagoras c 570-c495BCE, Plato c428-347BCE, Aristotle 384-322 BCE or the Roman Vitruvius c80/70–15 BCE.
In the Archaic period humans were servants of the gods, subject to their will as in Homer’s Odyssey (possibly 8th/7th Century BCE). Humans, created by the gods were subservient; the gods were all-important, demanding notice; it wasn’t too important for artists to get human anatomy right. We don’t know why they sculpted so many male kouroi or their clothed female equivalents kore. No one is sure whether these represent humans or gods. Archaeologists used to think that they portrayed Apollo the god who mediated between humans and the gods,
as so many were found near the sanctuary of Apollo at Boeotia. The female Kore share a name with Persephone goddess of the seasons. It’s largely thought today that these are offerings to gods, either representing gods themselves or the donors.
The last 100 years of the Archaic Age from about 600 to about 500BCE saw a growth towards humanism in Greek society, developing into the Classical age in which Plato and Aristotle were writing. Growing emphasis on anatomical correctness seems to have developed in parallel with philosophers’ emphasis on the importance of human beings and the human mind.
5 ATHLETE & ZEUS The more naturalistic images of late Hellenic art reflect
more profound belief in the value of what it was to be human. The Greeks came to believe that we reflect the gods and the gods reflect us. The gods were perfect, so images of humans, like gods should reflected ideals of perfect proportion.
The Olympic Games were initially religious ceremonies, not just entertainment or physical rivalry between city states. You glorified the gods by perfecting the bodies and skills of your young men. Artists thought they glorified the gods by perfecting their skills in representing the bodies of both the gods and human beings. Plato taught that a high way to glorify the gods and the state was to create ‘ideal’ beauty and live an ideal way of life. Aristotle believed that the ideal of beauty was to ‘represent and understand nature as closely as possible’ so art became more naturalistic than idealised.
6ABRAHAM / JESUS / BUDDHA / KAABA All cultures recognise that if God or the gods exist, the spiritual force is invisible, with no physical form that we see so can’t be represented naturalistically. No one in any culture has seen their god, except in visions or what theologians call ‘theophanies’ direct revelations of a god taking a physical form. That’s why the art of several religions has mostly focused on situations where gods are believed to have revealed themselves: in Jewish art this is Abraham and the three visitors, Jacob’s ladder or Moses on Sinai or Elijah on Horeb. Christian art shown the person of Jesus of Nazareth, in India it’s the person of Siddhartha who developed towards “awareness” and became the ‘Buddha’ “the awakened one”, Islam focuses not a-on an image but on the revealing of God. through the written word – hence so much beautiful calligraphy, or the Kaaba, the ancient house at the centre of Mecca which Abraham in legend cleared of images of tribal gods. All these have become physical ways of feeling close to a spiritual power that is intangible.
7 ABRAHAM SACRIFICING ISAAC – REMBRANDT 1635 Many of us learned in School or Sunday School the Genesis story of Abraham with his tribe leaving Ur of the Caldes in Mesopotamia and travelling to the Promised land.
The Abraham legend is about far more than a man going on a journey to found a homeland for the Jewish nation. At its heart is the idea of a tribe believing that they were discovering truer ways of understanding & worshipping their God. It used to be taught that Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac and being saved from this by an angel is about the faithfulness of a believer willing to sacrifice his future hope in obedience to God. Many modern theologians and anthropologists interpret the story rather more widely seeing it as representing the change from humans believing that ritual human sacrifice can appease the gods, to an understanding that an overall God cares for us personally and that true sacrificial following of God is inner, not external.
8 BABYLONIAN & EGYPTIAN GODS Abraham’s origins were in a culture where gods were represented by monstrous figures, as in Mesopotamia or Egypt. The power of divine characteristics was represented by animal characters – eagles, bulls, etc. Although the Hebrew idea of God was that he couldn’t be represented, some of the imagery of the Old Testament still contains references to this past.
9 VISION OF EZEKIEL The figures we no associate as Gospel symbols – the lion of St. Mark, the Winged man of St. Matthew, the Winged Ox representing St. Luke and the Eagle of St. John refer back to the vision of Ezekiel where God is represented as riding on a chariot accompanied by these strong angelic figures. Ezekiel had been in exile with his people back in Babylon, where they reencountered such images of gods with creatures’ heads.
10 ASSYRIAN THRONE OF THE GODS The Assyrian Gods were enthroned on similar winged creatures and chariots.
11 VISION OF EZEKIEL The fact that God in Ezekiel was described as riding in a chariot drawn by such creatures was perhaps a way of representing that the Hebrew monotheistic God is more powerful than the spiritual powers that were controlling rival nations. The spiritual world of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, (or Canaanite gods like Baal and Ashtaroth (1 Ki.7:3) represented in fertility symbols like ashera poles), were regarded as subservient to the Israelite God. Ezekiel’s imagery of God riding above spiritual beings composed of such creatures and ordering them, could be the way prophet emphasised this dominance of the Hebrew religion over surrounding gods. The idea of God as an old bearded man on a throne, is dangerous for misinterpreting the enormous power of the Hebrew/Christian God. It derives from the prophet Daniel who described God as “one of Ancient Days” (Dan.7:9). This had greater implications than we recognise today, envisioning God as the wisest elder who led the tribe.
12 JACOB’S LADDER – French 18thC / / Coptic Icon / Another famous Old Testament vision of the presence of God is seen in Jacob’s dream of a ladder between earth and heaven with angels climbing up & down, conveying blessings from God Western art has often represents this as a western wooden ladder, Blake as a spiral staircase. But how would the steps between earth and heaven have been understood by the culture in which Genesis was written? Genesis was probably edited into its final form after the Exile in Babylon, Jacob’s grandfather Abraham originated in a similar culture, Ur of the Chaldees.
13 BABYLON ZIGGURAT In both areas the idea of a ladder linking heaven and earth was the ziggurat, a stepped pyramid, at the top of which was a temple, where God was thought to live. Some contemporary scholars believe that the ladder of Jacob’s dream was a ziggurat. If so the story of Jacob makes sense. Jacob realises that God is present with him wherever he goes. The God of his people isn’t limited to a certain city or place with a temple in its midst. The temple of God, the ladder, the meeting place between God and people travels with us wherever we go.
14 SANCTUARY TENT AND JERUASALEM TEMPLE So when after the exile in Egypt the Hebrew people travelled through the wilderness to the Promised Land the Tent of Meeting with the Tabernacle at its centre became a physical symbol of this moving presence of the invisible God with his people.
15 AS ABOVE WITH ASSYRIAN MERCY SEAT At its heart was the Mercy Seat: the Arc of the Covenant as in Indiana Jones’ Raiders of the Lost Ark. This was a throne at the heart of the community, from which the presence of the invisible God ruled his people. The winged cherubim on the lid of the arc, again possibly derived from those winged thrones in Egyptian, Sumerian and Assyrian art. God was being represented as supreme over all other spiritual powers. When the psalms say “we find shelter under the shadow of your wings” they’re probably referring to this arc: the People of Israel found security in knowing that right at the centre of their culture the invisible God was always with them, securely protecting them, invisibly enthroned above the wings of the arc of the covenant.
16 DURA EUROPOS SYNANGOGUE Most think of Jewish faith as rejecting imagery but the Tabernacle and later Temple contained several symbols – golden pomegranates, cherubim sacred lights (Ex.31:3-5). The Jews distinguished themselves from other religions which used imagery of their gods. They believed they had a truer understanding of the spiritual world. The 2nd Commandment, next to importance to that of having no other God but the Lord was not to misrepresent their God: “You shall not make for yourselves any graven image, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.” (Deut. 5:8-10). Idolatry is a major theme in the Hebrew Bible. It describes many times in Jewish history where the people were in danger of following false ideas or false images of God. (Isa. 40:18; 19:1; Hos. 8:6; Ps. 96:7; 106:20; Ezek. 13:13)
17 DURA EUROPOS DETAIL The 3rd Century CE synagogue paintings at Dura Euopos in Syria show that Judaism did come to use images later in its history. By the mid-3rd Century CE their idea of what was idolatrous seems to have changed in some Jewish communities and some synagogues represented characters and legends from Jewish history on their walls. After the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and the Diaspora Jews often lived as a minority culture in multi-cultural towns.
This art may have been an affirmation of their identity, reminding them of their history. The synagogue was different to the Temple which had been destroyed; the ‘sacred home of God among his people’ was gone as a place of pilgrimage, festivals and sacrifice. The synagogue became more a place of teaching, meeting and prayer. They couldn’t worship in the way they’d done previously in the Temple, as they couldn’t sacrifice. So Art wasn’t desecrating the sacredness of the Sanctuary or substituting the presence of God for an image. It was used more for teaching, reminding the people of their culture.
18 DURA EUROPOS HOUSE CHURCH Some of the earliest Christian Church art was also found in Dura Europos. Not far from the synagogue archaeologists found an early 3rd Century Christian House Church with baptistery murals.
19 DURA EUROPOS BAPTISTRY
The imagery describes the faith into which new Christians were being baptised.
Above the baptism pool is the Good Shepherd and his flock, which the newly baptised were joining.
20 MURAL DETAIL As they came out of the waters they would see the imagery of the healed man picking up his bed and walking, and Christ’s empty tomb, reminding them of the new eternal and healed life they were now promised by the risen Christ.
21 CATACOMBS The tombs of the early Christians contained similar symbols of promise.
22AGAPE MEAL The love feast that the dead are sharing with Christ.
23 BURING FIERY FURNACE The rescue form the powers of death and resurrection, represented by the rescue of Daniel and his companions from the Burning Fiery furnace.
24 JONAH CATACOMB The story of Jonah rescued from the sea creature of finding rest under his gourd was used to represent Christians going down into the depths of death then rising from death to rest in paradise.
25 GOOD SHEPHERD SARCOPHAGUS The image of the Good Shepherd protecting and guiding his people, even through the valley of the shadow of death. must have boosted confidence for those facing death in the persecutions of the Church. After death they would enjoy the fruits of Paradise as here among vines.
26 SANTA COSTANZA Or here in the roof of the memorial chapel to the daughter of Constantine 1. The promise of eternal life is represented by the symbol of the Peacock whose flesh was thought not to rot.
27 BISHOP THEODORE SARCOPHAGUS It’s found here in the sarcophagus of Bishop Theodore……By the 4th C the Church had developed a plethora of symbolsto represent aspects of faith, the language we call iconography, “writing with images” much of which is still used today.
28 MAGI Some were newly invented by Christians: The coming of the magi, shows them in Phrigian caps known from eastern soldiers and merchants. The magi story was used by Christians as a sign that one day pagan nations like Rome that now persecuted them would one day recognise and pay homage to Christ.
29 CHRIST AS ORPHEUS / APOLLO In some of their symbols Christians made use of pagan imagery. Pictures of the Good Shepherd developed the imagery of Apollo or Orpheus and their flocks. Other salvation imagery showed Christ wrestling with the bull of death from the Mithraic mystery religion.
Early in the history of the Church questions developed about whether all this visual imagery was right for a religion based on an invisible God who forbade idolatry. Several Early Church Councils debated the issue. Many in the ancient world were superstitious of images. Early Churches for example discouraged three-dimensional sculpture, because of its links to pagan statues. So sculpture tended to be confined to Old Testament imagery & reliefs on sarcophagi – a Roman tradition.
30 ICON / FAYUM PORTRAITS 1st C
Others wanted more specific images of the one towards whom they were focusing worship, and said that it was permissible to represent Christ, because he was the image of the invisible God/ God taking physical form. Very few of these early realistic icons survive; most were destroyed in later destructions of images.
The models were Roman and Egyptian ‘Fayum funerary portraits’ used on embalmed bodies. But soon disquiet developed about the possible idolatry of showing Christ and the Saints so realistically. Icons only developed as devotional images through a long theological and artistic struggle. From the mid 4th Century to the 9th Century CE there was regular, often violent, controversy over whether images could be used by Christians to encourage prayer.
31 ICON OF VLADIMIR GREGORY OF NYSSA (330-395) and St AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO rejected the use of image BASIL THE GREAT (330-397) Archbishop of Caesarea, POPE GREGORY THE GREAT (c540-604) and John of Damascus (c700-752) promoted images which they said inspires Christians and illustrated stories of faith for the illiterate. The arguments went on for centuries encouraged by various Emperors and Empresses, many died and images were destroyed. Leo III was the strongest image-breaker, his grandson’s widow the Empress Irene was one of the greatest supporters of icons. The argument for the use of icons was not fully won until the Empress Theodora at the Third Council of Nicaea 843. This is celebrated in the Orthodox Church every 11th March as the Feast of “The Triumph of Orthodoxy”
A theological understanding was accepted that images were allowed as long as they were stylised and couldn’t be mistaken for the spiritual reality they represented. Devotion ‘latreia’ had to be focused on the reality of God beyond the image, not on the image itself. To encourage this it was ruled that the painted images on icons must be deliberately unnaturalistic. There should be no possibility that an image could be confused with a true portrait of the subject and God the Father could not be portrayed. Strict rules about colour, gesture, geometry were imposed on those who created icons to ensure their spiritual authenticity and guard against idolatry. Model images were created which the icon writers had to copy. Before and during the making of an image the artists had to pray set prayers that the Spirit of God would inspire them so that the image should be rightly used to inspire faith not idolatry.
32 ALEXAMENOS GRAFFITO
It often surprises people to find that the most common symbol of Christianity, the Cross didn’t appear in art until relatively late. The earliest surviving representation is not from a church but what seems to be a piece of anti-Christian propaganda scratched in plaster on a wall in the baths, deriding people who worship a god who could be nailed up like a horse. Crucifixion was a sign of shaming people not elevating them.
33-36 SANTA SABINA DOOR It wasn’t until the 3rd C, after the end of the worst persecutions, that the Cross began to be represented in Christian art. Even then it was not shown on its own, but as part of the life of Christ, as here on the doors of Santa Sabina in Rome.
37 MESKELL IVORIES It’s represented on the sides of a box alongside images of the passion and resurrection. There’s a challenge between Santa Sabina and the British Museum over which of these is the earliest surviving example of a Christian Crucifixion scene.
38 SANT APOLLINARE IN CLASSE This example is fascinating. Originally, the roundel probably contained an image of Christ reigning in glory like that in the inset below from SAN VITALE in the same city, perhaps just his bust, like a representation of a Roman emperor. Iconoclasts had the image removed to focus people’s worship on what the Cross represents - salvation, rather than on a false image of God. This Cross isn’t an image of suffering; it is adorned with jewels, like the glorious bejewelled crosses created for later emperors, as described in the Anglo Saxon poem the Dream of the Rood.
39 VIENNA AND COTTON GENESIS The tradition of creating beautiful finely crafted religious objects began early. Exquisitely illustrated religious books survive form the 5 &6th Centuries. This wasn’t just to entertain the wealthy patrons who could afford such volumes. It shows a reverence for the words of scriptures that remains strong in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions.
40 BOOK OF KELLS
The great sacred books of Celtic and Early mediaeval religion, like the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells show that reverence was given not just to images but to the sacred texts. Scripture was regarded as communication from God to human beings, treated with reverence and awe. But as with Christian images some treated the Sacred Word with superstition, even idolatry. The beautiful books gained reputations, The creation of the book of Lindisfarne was attributed to a saint, Kells as created by angels.
41 BOOK SHRINES These books were protected in Book shrines like these and came to be revered as holy objects in themselves.
42 ST DENIS, PARIS – Abbot Suger The Cathedrals of the Middle Ages brought the collection of such relics and sacred works of art and the use of symbolism of religious art to a highpoint. Suger, Abbot of the royal abbey of St Denis filled his church with artefacts collected from all over Christendom. As a theologian planning his church, Suger aimed to glorify God by reflecting the Divine in every detail of the building. Suger’s treatise survives; you can read on the internet his writings explaining his aims in creating the first Gothic Cathedral. Sculptures depicted parallels between the Old and the New Testaments, the geometry of the building reflected the detail that God had put into creation.
43 GOD THE GEOMETICIAN Cathedrals became immersed in symbolism. The emphasis of scholarship was on a ‘thinking God’ who planned both the world and the process of salvation. They took literally St. Paul’s words in Romans 1 that God revealed himself in what he had made. As God was the Source of all Life, Creation and history were believed to reveal nature. The Zodiac was represented because the stars and seasons revealed God’s perfect ordering of the universe. The animals of the Bestiary and plants of the Herbal were explained as reflecting aspects of God’s nature and truth. The top mediaeval map describes how the continents reflected the Trinity.
44 CHARTRES CATHEDRAL The idea that God ordered the universe throughout by numerical proportions as found in Pythagoras, was promoted by both clergy and architects who used sacred geometry in the proportions of their buildings. Every element of Chartres Cathedral’s design is thought by some to be related in numerical proportion. The proportions of the building’s length to its width or the bays, windows, doors, piers and capitals all relate in proportions
45 LA SAINTE CHAPELLE, PARIS The royal chapel, La Sainte Chapelle in Paris was designed to hold a royal collection of literally thousands of holy relics. Its particular treasure was supposedly the ‘crown of thorns’, which was the focus of the chapel, under this magnificent glass. The building must have looked astounding, with so many gold and silver reliquaries glistening in the light of the coloured glass.
46 ENTRANCE - LA SAINTE CHAPELLE, PARIS
The crown of thorns provided the theme. Salvation was reflected in the iconography right from the entrance. Christ the Creator stands at the door jam. Below him are the stories of creation: Above is the end of time, the Last Judgement.
The windows illustrate stories from the whole of biblical history through which God brought salvation. You came to the chapel to receive the blessings that result from that history. It also has a political element. The King whose chapel this is, was regarded as the ruler who keeps your world ordered as God’s divinely appointed steward; representing the King of the Universe.
47 PIETA & MAN OF SORROWS In the 14th Century, about the time of the Black Death the emphasis in mediaeval art shifted from the power and order of God to his identification with the suffering of human beings. Representations of the Suffering Christ became common, especially images of the Pieta and Man of Sorrows. God is seen as caring and suffering with us – a very different understanding from a detached God who was to be feared and obeyed.
48 GIOTTO – ARENA CHAPEL PADUA Giotto’s innovations at the beginning of the Renaissance don’t just show that artists learned to paint more human, substantial figures. Giotto was working for the Franciscans who emphasised that religion related to real life. It isn’t just about ideals or abstractions. So Jesus and saints in Giotto’s frescoes are far more realistic than in any religious art previously. His scenes may have derived from the gestures and tableaux in the mystery plays popular throughout Europe at the time. The Guild craftsmen who played out these stories in the streets worked for the patrons of many church commissions. The Franciscans supported the use of mystery plays and paintings to teach popular faith, just as Francis had introduced the Christmas Crib and promoted Passion Plays and Stations of the Cross as accessible teaching aids.
48 FIGURES IN GIOTTO DEPOSITION The emotion is strongest in Giotto’s murals of the Crucifixion and Deposition. This isn’t just asking us to contemplate
the Cross as the source of Salvation. We are meant to identify with the suffering of Christ on behalf of all human beings and be moved to respond with devotion.
The lines of flow in the composition and the poignant emotions of each figure enhance this.
50 GIOTTO DEPOSITION - ANGELS WEEPING Suffering is given a divine dimension in the agony of the angels. Heaven as well as earth are in pain. The bringing of Salvation to humankind has caused God and the spiritual realm agony – so much, it is saying, is God’s love for us. God’s empathy with human beings is emphasised in the theology of contemporary mediaeval writers like Richard Rolle. The figures of angels are interesting. Only half of each is in this world, their feet are beyond the clouds in the spiritual realm. As far as I know this is the first time in western art that the spiritual world has been represented in quite this way. Angel images go back way beyond Roman times. But this new emphasis on representing the emotion of the spiritual world probably relates to Franciscan teaching that physical and spiritual life work together to glorify God and raise human beings in value. St Francis’ famous Canticle of the Sun -“brother sun, sister moon” emphasises our spiritual unity with the whole created order.
51 FRA ANGELICO – Corridor in San Marco Just as Giotto reflects the spirituality of the Franciscans, one of the greatest religious painters of all time,
Fra Angelico reflects the spirituality of the Dominicans. He was already an artist and manuscript illuminator before he became a Dominican monk. Following his brother, he became the prior of the Dominican Order at Fiesole. Most famously he decorated the new reformed Dominican monastery of San Marco in Florence.
52 SANTA MARIA NOVELLA The Dominican’s headquarters, the Church of Santa Maria Novella, was filled with confident frescoes, proclaiming the triumph of Dominican teaching.
53 FRA ANGELICO Corridor San Marco & Annunciation Fra Angelico’s San Marco frescoes focus more on inviting the viewer’s individual devotion. The monks would pass this now-famous mural of the Annunciation perhaps 20 times or more a day, coming from or returning to their cells for services, meals, ablutions, going out to preach. It was a reminder that Christ’s birth was to be revealed in them. They have to feel and live it as truly as Mary did, letting it direct their lives & preaching.
54 SAN MARCO CELL Here the same image is on the wall of one of the cells to focus meditation. Christ had to become as real inside the monk as he was when he grew inside Mary. Each individual monk’s cell illustrates an aspect of Christ’s life and ministry. The monk was committed pend time here in daily devotion, to study and meditate on scripture, and reflect theologically. The Dominicans were a preaching order; they vowed to turn their meditation into teaching. Years before Fra Angelico the Dominican teacher Humbert of Romans wrote that in order to be a good preacher in word and deed, one had to be a good contemplative. Many Dominican leaders of Fra Angelico’s time encouraged visual art as a contemplative focus. Fra Angelico’s frescoes and style were designed for this. Today if you go to San Marco you walk from one cell to another reading in a few minutes the stories of the life of Christ. But a monk would live in the same cell for years with his particular fresco influencing his interior life.
55 FRA ANGELICO - St Marco Fresco - EMPTY TOMB
Here for example, the Marys find Jesus’ empty tomb. The Angel announces “He is not here for he has risen”. But they cannot see the presence of the risen Christ with them, just as we can’t. Imagine that you are a teaching monk.This painting gives you something profound to reflect on daily. You consider what the Resurrection mean to you and to those you teach and preach to daily? How do you answer the questions in your mind and in your congregation? How did you help people trust a loving invisible God?
The Dominicans were scholars; great theologians like Thomas Aquinas, so images like this were intended to inspire not just personal meditation but theological writings. The Dominican mystic Meister Eckhart talks about faith needing to be “born in our soul”… This is far more than being intellectually persuaded by theological arguments. Faith being ‘born in the soul’ means becoming so immersed in belief that you live it day by day and work it out in experience. The Dominican monk at the side of the picture is doing this - contemplating the meaning of this mystery to him, as an example to the monk living in this cell.
56 MICHELANGELO SISTINE CEILING Michelangelo, we know from his letters and poetry, was profoundly religious too, though creating for the intellectual and powerful elite. His images are more than devotional; they are designed to impress both visually and by intellectual scholarship. Neo-Platonic intellectualism dominated the High Renaissance, uniting classical philosophy with Christianity to show continuity in philosophical truth from the Greek philosophers to contempor-ary Renaissance theologians under the patronage of the Pope. The patrons’ advisors not the artist devised the themes.
57 CREATION OF ADAM God is shown with the power of the great ancient gods (he looks more like Zeus than the Christian concept of a loving God). Adam’s ideal proportions reflect the perfection of God. Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists believed that outer beauty reflected inner beauty, which is why so many saints are represented as ideal beauties in Italian Renaissance Art by artists like Botticelli and Filippo Lippi.
58 GRUNEWALD Isenheim CrucifixioN Northern European art is often more earthy. It emphasised the real, sometimes to the exclusion of the beautiful. Christ is emphasised as real and incarnate - God become man suffering for people. This is designed for the chapel of a hospital specialising in treating terrible skin and neurological problems. The patients and priests administering relief were meant to be encouraged, recognising God identifying with human suffering, as in the Pieta and Man of Sorrows, at the time of the Black Death. He has gone through it as intensely as those being treated.
59 SANDREDAM INTERIOR CHURCH The Protestant Reformation revived the ancient Church’s distrust of images. Luther condemned the abuse of images and false worship, but he didn’t reject art. For him God spoke to us through the visible world, but the Bible was God’s most important form of communication. Faith became much more about being sure that you believed truthfully. Calvin (1509-64) and Zwingli (1484-1531) condemned “graven images” which misled people into trusting in the wrong things. The written and preached word was the primary way to receive spiritual instruction; the visible they emphasised couldn’t contain the infinite. The German reformer Andreas Karlstadt (1468-1541) was the figure who promoted the violent destruction of images through-out Reformed countries, stripping visual decoration from churches leaving the bare like this. Often the image destroyers betrayed their own superstitions; Reformers gouged out the eyes from images, chopped off heads and hands, showing they suspected that idols but had powers which they had to destroy.The emphasis was to be on the pulpit, not images, shrines, reliquaries, or even the altar since they regarded the sacraments as superstitious. Preaching sometimes for up to two hours became central to enforce truths.
60 CRANACH - WITTENBERG ALTARPIECE The Protestants DID accept some religious images, like Luther’s friend Cranach’s altarpiece for one of the centres of Protestantism, Wittenberg, where Luther first declared his theses. But the pictures weren’t designed for devotional contemplation. They are doctrinal, political statements about the truth of Protestantism,
61 HENRY VIII GREAT BIBLE Printed imagery flourished in illustrated Bibles, Protestant books and pamphlets. Mass production of printed material allowed religious and propaganda literature to be made widely available.
62 BIBLE PROTESTANT ILLUSTRATIONS ‘Illustration’ seems to have been regarded as less dangerous or idolatrous. Printed portraits of the Reformers promoted their ideas. Many in society remained illiterate, so tracts printed anti-papist woodcuts to promote Reformed ideas among the masses. Here the Reformers illustrate parallels between the persecution of Christ and the corrupt powers of the papacy.
63 CATHOLIC ANTI-LUTHER WOODCUTS Printed propaganda was used by both sides. These Catholic prints show Luther being played by the devil
like bagpipes, with the many destructive heads like an heretical monster from the book of Revelation.
64 REMBRANDT – DENIAL OF PETER Rembrandt is perhaps the nearest that Protestant art gets to devotional religious art. He painted in a Dutch protestant culture that discouraged religious images, while his mother remained devoutly Catholic. It seems obvious from his images that Rembrandt reflected seriously on the meaning of his Biblical subjects. This isn’t just a picture of Peter denying Christ during his trial; it is a deep psychological exploration. You can feel Rembrandt asking his viewers and himself: “how faithful are you to Christ?” “Do you betray him under pressure?” “Is the good of others protected by you?” It’s also very personal art. The artist is exploring his own faith, not just painting for others.
65 PARMA CATHEDRAL BAROQUE INTERIOR The Protestant Reformation encouraged a re-thinking of the use of images in the Catholic Church. The reforming Council of Trent held between 1545-63, promoted a revival in the Church’s use of the arts. The drama of Baroque art, such as the trompe l’oeil ceilings of Parma Cathedral and San Ignazzio in Rome, were in part propagandist aiming to impress worshippers, to remaining within a Church under threat from European Reform.
66 SAN IGNAZIO, ROME These visions of heaven represented the conviction
that only in the Catholic Church could you find salvation and be assured of a place in heaven. Here in your church was a direct link to heaven.
67 ZURBARAN CRUCIFIX / BERNINI ECSTASY OF ST TERESA
The Counter Reformation primarily promoted Baroque Art to encourage a sincere revival in prayerful spirituality. Francisco de Osuna, John of the Cross, Theresa of Avila, and Ignatius of Loyola encouraged contemplative prayer and reformed the monastic orders. The visual image became particularly important for encouraging meditation and contemplation.
Artists like Ribera, Murillo. Zurbaran and Velasquez in Spain created images that promoted contemplation and sincere prayer. Light, shadow, saints responding to the mercy of God with devout gestures were designed to encourage responses of faith. The images were made very realistic to encourage people to believe in the reality of the spiritual world. The spiritual ecstasy of saints encouraged one to explore prayer more sincerely oneself.
68 VELASQUEZ – Christ Contemplated by the Human Soul. Velasquez painting in the National Gallery is a wonderful example. We are asked to contemplate Jesus being wounded for our salvation. He’s not over-bloody, unlike Grunewald’s Isenheim altarpiece; he’s physically attractive, looking at us imploringly, expressing God’s love in his willingness to suffer for us. The angel is asking us to open up to this offer of salvation with the simplicity and devoted contemplation of this child-like soul. These are some of the first examples in art where an ‘interior’ faith is being represented in metaphor.
69 CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH The 18th and 19th Centuries’ European Enlightenment challenged faith even more profoundly than the Reformation. Scholarly criticism questioned traditional Christian understanding of the Bible, bringing a crisis in faith. To many thinking minds traditional ways of thinking about God were insufficient. If God existed he had to be re-thought. Christian art had to change to reflect this questioning.
Friedrich recognised that God was no wise old man on a heavenly throne. This man stands on the mountaintop contemplating his smallness as well as his value amid the universal nature of truth and the powers at work in the universe. If the spirit of God is present in nature how do we understand it? Perhaps God’s presence might be sensed in nature in ‘Sublime’ situations where you were forced to consider your value in the context of the enormity of the Universe. Turner and Wordsworth explored this too.
70 FRIEDRICH – WINTER LANDSCAPE The Cross and the Church in present in some of these images but God is a mysterious presence somehow to be sensed amid all the questions and longings for the healing of society.
71 JOHN MARTIN – DESTRUCTION OF BABYLON Several artists also saw a crisis coming in industrial society. As Dickens or Zola challenged social ills their novels, painters questioned what people were doing to God’s world. John Martin warned of apocalyptic catastrophes if society didn’t change.
72 JOHN MARTIN - THE GREAT GAY OF GOD'S WRATH
73 TISSOT 350 WATERCOLOURS FROM THE LIFE OF CHRIST
Others tried to make religious art more realistic, to show that faith was still relevant in enlightened society. Several religious artists like Holman Hunt, the Dane Carl Heinrich Bloch (1834 -1890) & the American James Tissot travelled to the Middle East to paint the places where biblical events happened and make their illustrations of scripture more archaeologically true or geographically naturalistic. This parallels the studies of biblical scholars like Albert Schweitzer who tried to discover the Historical Jesus amid myths added over time, speculative scholarship which continues today. Though Tissot was primarily a society painter, his conversion left him committed to the use of art to promote faith. He travelled extensively and created an amazing archive of what he believed were authentic images of the settings of the Gospels.
74 HENRY OSAWA TANNER ANNUNCIATION The American negro artist Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859 – 1937), from a Pentecostal Methodist family portrayed a faith rooted in reality. He too travelled to Palestine to try to make his images authentic. He trained in Paris influenced by Realists like Millet. He wanted to encourage not idealised images but a faith in Christ as a real person identifying with real people,.
75 HENRY OSAWA TANNER THE THANKFUL POOR Perhaps even more poignant are Tanner’s works representing the simple faith of ordinary people.
76 MILLET ANGELUS / Van Gogh Potato Eaters / GAUGUIN VISION AFTER THE SERMON / GAUGUIN YELLOW & GREEN CHRIST
Tanner was reflecting the interest in the simple faith of peasants in the work of artists like Millet Van Gogh and Gauguin. They sensed that reality was to be found not in scholarship but how people lived real life in relation to their understanding of God, and they tried to find styles that didn’t just copy nature, but suggested a greater spiritual truth beyond nature. Van Gogh, Gauguin and the Nabis tried to be universalistic in their representation of the faith, syncretising Christian themes with styles derived from other cultures, particularly Japanese art. They wanted to show in painting that the Christian theme of salvation had universal contemporary relevance and wasn’t just limited to western culture.
77 MAURICE DENIS - NABI CRUCIFIX Experiments with Modernist styles at the end of the 19th Century and through the 20th Century often make the style more prominent than the subject. Artists like the Nabis, the Hebrew word for ‘prophet’ weren’t just inventing modern forms. The style, as with Cubism 15 years later, was searching for ways to convey different understandings of reality. Denis, a committed Catholic used vibrant colour influenced by Gauguin to suggest the power of God contained within the scene (The swirly paint in Van Gogh’s landscapes was for the same.
78 SPENCER RESURRECTION AT COOKHAM Much 20th Century religious art is the artists’ personal response to faith rather than representing traditional church doctrine. Spencer looked for religious truth and God’s presence in the world around him in the everyday life of Cookham.
79 SPENCER CHRIST IN THE WILDERNESS Spencer’s faith like his lifestyle is idiosyncratic, but sincere. Perhaps his most poignant works are the panels of Christ in the Wilderness, designed for the ceiling of Cookham Church. They grew out of personal distress. Spencer had left his wife Hilda for a short-lived marriage to a virago called Patricia Preece, who fleeced him of his possessions, leaving him on the streets. He moved temporarily to Highgate, where these pictures were conceived. He is identifying with Christ’s own temptations and sufferings Spencer didn’t just copy biblical stories; he imagined the character and humanity of Jesus. Taking the imagination beyond scripture is a feature of 20th Century faith, theology and art.
80 ROUAULT - CHRIST MOCKED Though under the pressures of wartime many sought a true faith to hold onto, the torments of war caused many to lose faith in traditional ideas of God. Rouault a Catholic, sought to make modernist meditations on the place of God in human society. He combined stylistic aspects of icons, stained glass, symbolist art &Expressionism, to find a modern way to express religious truth.
81 ROUAULT - MISERERE ET GUERRE
Rouault published a poetic book about the experience of the Great War. Images of people suffering in the world were juxtaposed with images of the suffering Christ, showing how God is involved in the sufferings of humanity. These expressive prints combine many different techniques, photo-etching, direct engraving, aquatint, eating away the surface of the printing plate to create a sense of spontaneous emotion.
82 SUTHERLAND CRUCIFIX Sutherland responded similarly to the 2nd World War in studies for a crucifixion painting for St. Matthew’s Northampton. This was based on Grunewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece but shows the Passion of Christ in raw paint. It was probably the success of this work which led to his commission for Coventry Cathedral.
83 ASSI CHURCH – FRANCE Some churches in the mid-20th Century tried to revive ecclesiastical art to attract people to church, proving that Christianity relates to the contemporary world. But art isn’t the way to do this; authenticity by living the true Christian life is the way to show that faith has a reality for today. The Church at Assi employed many famous artists but it feels more like a modernist museum than a place for worship.
Sometimes in modern religious art, style and content seem to conflict. The best religious art isn’t always by the most famous artist. Picasso’s crucifixion painting is almost meaningless. In some modern art the style is almost more important than the subject. In the best art the style and the subject speak to each other, as in Fra Angelico and Rouault.
84 COVENTRY CATHEDRAL Religious art can no longer work in the same way today as it did in the Mediaeval Cathedral or the Renaissance chapel. Commissioned artists need to think carefully about what the work of art is for. To me the most meaningful work in Coventry Cathedral is the baptistery window where colour and light suggest the numinous. Abstract art can suggest immanent presence and feeling rather than showing us what we have faith in.
85 ROTHKO CHAPEL As a secular Jew Mark Rothko’s chapel canvases in Houston aren’t designed as a Christian space, or for any specific religion. He studied the comparative religious experience of different cultures through the writings of William James and Eastern spiritual writers. Rothko was fascinated by the spiritual longing in human beings and how colour, texture and scale can stir spiritual senses. The only suggestions of Christian imagery here are the triptych arrangements of canvasses and the colour of mystery, penitence and suffering.
86 BILL VIOLA MESSENGER & ANGELS OF THE MILLENNIUM
Bill Viola creates a similar sense of the numinous in his video installations, one of which has just been permanently installed in St. Paul’s Cathedral. His art is full of suggestions of religious symbolism, water, fire, air, light, gesture, contemporary figures in traditional Christian iconographic poses. But he is deliberately not trying to be specifically Christian, just suggesting that the spiritual world is as real and as present as the tangible world.
87 DAMIEN HIRST Damien Hirst’s is not religious art; it plays with exploring our relationship with death, the temporariness of human life and what we believe and value.
88 MARK WALLINGER ECCE HOMO / FRINK WALKING MADONNA
Some of the best contemporary religious works humanise faith. Mark Wallinger’s Ecce Homo, is a life-size Jesus confronting an over-life size commercial and political world. Frink’s Walking Madonna in Salisbury is unidealised – a real person which whom many can identify.
89 IAIN MCKILLOP – Gloucester Cathedral Altarpiece. When I was commissioned for this altarpiece the Cathedral and I wanted to create a specifically Christian image suggesting the promise of Salvation on this wall ravaged in the Reformation when the sculpture reredos and glass was smashed.
90 EXPRESSIVE FACE OF SUFFERING CHRIST It is deliberately expressive and realist to help people identify with the figures and consider how Christ identifies with our needs and sufferings. What is most special to me about this commission is that the work of art has in some ways transformed the use of the chapel. Instead of just wandering round looking at the architecture, monuments and stained glass, visitors began to stop and reflect in front of the paintings. It has became so much a chapel of private prayer that the cathedral installed a candle stand for those who find it meaningful to light a candle when they pray.
91 ALISON WATT – STILL - EDINBURGH CHURCH To me, one of the most successful contemporary works to be commissioned by a church is in a small chapel in Edinburgh. The imagery is not specifically Christian. The painted veil or curtain, suggests the veil of the temple separating the spiritual world form ours. The four canvases suggest the form a cross. It invites us to be ‘still’ and reflect on what is beyond. As you reflect, you get a sense that the veil could lift or move. It’s special, I think, because it is not didactic. It doesn’t dictate what we should believe. It hangs there suggesting to me: “trust in that which is beyond your comprehension.” Ultimately that is what all faith is about. We cannot see the things in which we put our faith. But all of us, whether we have a specific religious faith or not, receive self-value from what is intangible in our lives – love, trust, care, beauty and creative or reflective thought. The intangible is perhaps more important, than the material life with which our lives is usually so much preoccupied. The best art tries to use a material to open us to greater things.
A JOURNEY THROUGH FAITH AND ART - ILLUSTRATIONS LIST
1 Basilica of St Michael, Aaltenstadt, Schongau King’s College Chapel, Cambridge
2 Chauvet Caves s France, c30,000BCE / Romanesque Cross , St. Michael Aaltenstadt, Schongau / Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel
3 Pech Merle Cave in Cabrerets, France c23000 BCE
Venus of Willendorff, c28,000 - 25,000 BCE , Naturalhistorisches Museum, Vienna
4 Koroi c580 BCE c450 BCE Polykleitos – Diadumanos c430 BCE (Roman marble copy, National Archaeological Museum of Athens).
5 Zeus / Poseidon c 450-460 BCE National Archaeological Museum, Athens / Victorious Youth Mid 2nd C BCE Metropolitan New York
6 Suggested Journey of Abraham / Rembrandt 1635, Sacrifice of Isaac, Hermitage, St. Petersburg
7 Winged Guardians - Assyrian Lamassu c721BCE . Babylonian & Syrian
8 &10 Vision of Ezekiel chapter 1 / The Tetramorph
9 Chariot or throne of Cherubim carrying their god Syrian . Egyptian . Babylonian
11 Jacob’s Vision,17th C French. / William Blake 1805 British Mus.
12 Ziggurats at Babylon and Ur
13 Reconstruction of the Tabernacle & Mercy Seat
14 Chariot or throne of Cherubim carrying their god
15 c245 Synagogue Dura Europos, Syria / Excavation of Christian House Church.
16 Dura Europos, Syria c245 Synagogue
17-18 Dura Europos House-Church & Baptistery c235
19 Dura Europos House Church Baptistery c235: Women at the Tomb / Jesus healing the Paralytic
20 Catacomb of St Thecla, Rome 4thC
21 Agape Meal Catacombs of Domitilla early 4th C. / Maxentius 4th C / Priscilla 2nd C
22 2nd -3rd C Shadrach, Meshach & Abednego in the fiery furnace, Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome
23-24 4th C Catacomb of St Pietro &Marcellino, Rome
25 Late 4th C Good Shepherd Sarcophagus Vatican Mus
26 Santa Costanza Rome 354-360
27 Sarcophagus of Bishop Theodore, Sant’Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna 6thC
28 Visitation of Magi (Note their Phrigian caps) 4th C Catacomb of Callixtus 3rd C Sarcophagus Vatican Mus
29 Christ as Orpheus/Apollo, Catacomb of Domitilla 2-3rd C & St Marcellino 4th C
30 6th C Encaustic Pantocrator Icon, St Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai
31 Fayum Portraits Late 1st C CE
32 Eleousa (Madonna of Tenderness) Icon of Valdimir Constantinople c1130 Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow 33 Alexamenos Graffito, Paletine, Rome, 1st -3rd C 34-37 Door Panel Santa Sabina, Rome c432 38 Meskell Ivories” 420-30 Ivory box, British Museum: Christ before Pilate & Takes up Cross, Empty Tomb, Ascension
39 Christ Pantocrator, San Vitale, Ravenna 547
40 San Vitale, Ravenna 547
41 Sant’ Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna 549
42 Vienna Genesis 6th C / Cotton Genesis Fragment late 5th C Egypt
43 ‘Christi Autem Generatio’ Lindisfarne Gospels early 7th C / Book of Kells c800
44 Book Shrine of the Cumdach of Molaise c1001-25 & Book of Dimna 10th C
45 St Denis Cathedral, Paris c 1137-44 designed by Abbot Suger
46 God the Architect, Moralised Bible, Vienna c1250
47 Chartres Cathedral West Front c 1145
48-49 La Sainte Chapelle, Paris 1243-1248
50 Roettgen Pieta c1360 Rheinischen Landesmuseum Bonn / Man of Sorrows c1350 National Gallery,
51-53 Giotto 1305 Lamentation, Arena Chapel Padua
54 Dominican Convent San Marco Florence,
Fra Angelico Frescoes: 1436-1444
55 Andrea di Bonaiuto da Firenze c1365 Allegory of the Active & Triumphant Church & of the Dominican Order, Santa Maria Novella , Florence: Spanish Chapel
56 Cell San Marco Florence Fra Angelico Frescoes: 1436-1444
57-58 Fra Angelico, San Marco Florence, “He is not here for he is risen”
59 Michelangelo 1508-12 & 1534-41 Sistine Chapel
60 Michelangelo Creation of Adam c1510 / Jeremiah / Libyan Sibyl / Ignudo
61 Mattheus Grunewald 1512-16 Isenheim Altarpiece
62 Pieter Jansz Saenredam 1649 Interior of the Church of St Odulphus at Assendelft
63 Lucas Cranach 1547 Wittenberg Altarpiece
64 Holbein 1538 woodcut Henry VIII’s ‘Great Bible’
65 Cranach the Elder ‘Passional’ 1521 Illustrated polemic of Reformation devised by Philipp Melanchthon and Johann Schwertfeger.
66 Hans Brosamer 1529 Catholic anti-Luther woodcuts
67 Rembrandt 1660 Peter’s Denial of Christ
68 Correggio 1526-30 Assumption of the Virgin Parma Cathedral
69 Andrea Pozzo 1685 Ceiling of San Ignazio, Rome
70 Zurbaran 1637 Crucifix, Art Institute Chicago
71 Pedro De Mena / Gregorio Fernandez 1625-30
72 Bernini 1645-52 Ecstasy of St Teresa
73 Velazquez 1628-9 Christ Contemplated by the Human Soul, National Gallery, London
74 Caspar David Friedrich 1818 The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog/Mists
75 Caspar David Friedrich 1811 Winter landscape
76 Caspar David Friedrich 1813 Cross in the Mountains, Dusseldorf
77 Friedrich Overbeck 1831-40 ‘Nazarine’ The Triumph of Religion in Art
78 John Martin 1831 The Fall of Babylon Aquatint and Etching
79 John Martin 1851-51 The Great Day of His Wrath
80 Bouguereau 1889 Flagellation of Christ / Thomas Eakins 1880 Crucifixion
81 Henry Ossawa Tanner 1898 Annunciation
82 Henry Ossawa Tanner 1898 The Thankful Poor
83 Millet 1857-9 The Angelus
84 Holman Hunt 1851-3 The Light of the Word, Keble College, Oxford / 1900-4 St Paul’s Cathedral
85 Holman Hunt 1852 The Awakening Conscience / Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1853 Found /
86 Holman Hunt 1854-6 The Scapegoat
87 James Tissot The Disciples of Jesus Baptising / The Lord’s Prayer c1886-96 from ‘350 Watercolours of the Life of Christ’
88 Gauguin 1889 The Yellow Christ / Green Christ (Breton Calvary)
89 Gauguin 1889 Christ in the Garden of Olives (Self-Portrait)
90 Van Gogh 1889 Starry Night
91 Maurice Denis c1890 The Road to Calvary / The Offertory at Calvary
92 Matisse 1949-51Vence Chapel
93 Mark Rothko 1971 Rothko Chapel, Houston
94 John Piper and Patrick Reyntiens 1962 The Light of the Holy Spirit, Coventry Cathedral Baptistery
95 Ceri Richards 1967 Sacrament Chapel, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral
96 Stanley Spencer 1938 Christ in the Wilderness Series
97 Stanley Spencer 1926-7 Resurrection at Cookham
98 Georges Rouault 1905 Christ Mocked /
1930 Christ and the Soldier
99 Georges Rouault 1916-27 Miserere et Guerre
100 Graham Sutherland 1946 Crucifixion Study, Whitworth Gallery, Manchester
101-2 Mark Wallinger 1999 Ecce Homo / Elizabeth Frink 1981Walking Madonna
103 Damien Hurst 1993 Mother and Child Divided / 2007 For the Love of God
104 Bill Viola 1996 The Messenger / 2001 Five Angels for the Millennium
105-6 Iain McKillop 2004 Lady Chapel Triptych Gloucester Cathedral
107 Alison Watt 2004 Still: Old St Paul’s Church, Edinburgh