Painting the Apocalypse

Since it is Easter season, and we are working through a number of vivid Sunday readings from the Book of Revelation I thought it would be daft to miss the chance to find out about some of the artwork created around these tumultuous scenes.

As it turns out, and maybe obviously enough, it has not been the most 'mainstream' source of inspiration over the centuries so I expect we'll be able to make a fairly focused study. I also suspect my beloved Doré will not be too far away.

Looking over the Easter Sunday Mass readings themselves, one obvious thing is that the verses are not continuous, they pick bits and pieces from different chapters and visions. By way of a list of what we've heard and what is yet to come we have:

1. 2nd Sunday of Easter: Chapter 1:9-13, 17-19
2. 3rd Sunday of Easter: Chapter 5:11-14
3. 4th Sunday of Easter: Chapter 7:9,14-17
4. 5th Sunday of Easter: Chapter 21:1-5
5. 6th Sunday of Easter: Chapter 21:10-14, 22-23

And then we hit the Feast of the Ascension and we are back to Epistle readings. These readings from The Book of Revelation include some of the most well known scenes of the book: the vision of the seven candlesticks, the new Jerusalem, and the adoration of the Lamb. Of course it misses out a great deal too so I also expect to use these readings as a starting point for delving further into some of the narrative that we miss just taking the readings.

We can also cast an eye over how the Book appears in readings of the major feasts throughout the year. As we'd expect you don't hear the Book of Revelation too often - though it does play a very striking role in the Mass for the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the famous scene of The Woman and the Dragon.

The Osma Beatus codex

The Book of Revelation also sometimes appears again at the very end of the year, at the Feast of Christ the King:

Behold, he is coming amid the clouds, 

and every eye will see him, 

even those who pierced him.
(Revelation 1:7)

The Silos Beatus codex

Recalling both Daniel 7:13 and Matthew 24:30 (in which Jesus Himself recalls the verse from Daniel) summoning the image of universal kingship

the one like a Son of man received dominion, glory, and kingship; 

all peoples, nations, and languages serve him.

Anyway our interest is going to be in how this collection of scenes fit into the narrative of St John's apocalypse and how this story has been taken up, particularly in Medieval as well as later artwork. In particular I expect we shall come across many gems, as we hit some of the less familiar parts of the book - frogs anyone?

The Osma Beatus codex

As you can see the rather striking images I've chosen for this first post have all come from a collection of medieval codices of Beatus of Liébana's Commentary on the Apocalypse, which will come up repeatedly as a wonderful source of Medieval images of the apocalypse. However I'm eventually hoping to discuss a range of sources, across a number of eras. From these Medieval codices and the Bamberg apocalyspe, featuring for example St John's vision of the seven candlesticks:

right up to considerably later interpretations, for instance from Dürer's apocalypse (Revelation 4:1-10, 5:1-8):

Anyway, I've certainly got plenty to learn, so I had best get started!

Fourth Sunday of Easter

SInce it is good shepherd Sunday and I am not in an original frame of mind the theme for the week's art should come as no great shock, and I was expecting a quiet enough week. How wrong I was. What I thought would be an easy quest for pictures of lambs turned into a veritable detective story: 'The Mysterious Absence Of The Good Shepherd'.

Let me explain... if you search around for depictions of the Good Shepherd you find, overwhelmingly, nineteenth and twentieth Century material. I've included a particularly famous example, by Bernard Plockhurst, a member of the German Romantic movement (with a not inconsiderable connection to the English Pre-Raphaelite movement).

The Good Shepherd, Bernard Plockhorst

Okay there are exceptions - Philippe de Champaigne's 'Le Bon Pasteur' provides at least one Baroque example and there are representations in Greek iconography. Anyway, so far, so unpopular, but digging marginally deeper we find the Good Shepherd is unavoidable in very early Christian art. 

Depiction of the Good Shepherd from the Catacomb of Priscilla

There are curious features - and maybe even a couple of clues to its sudden disappearance here. Unlike their later counterparts these images were not generally portraits so much as metaphors or symbols. I am certainly no specialist but there seem convincing connections to pagan imagery around Apollo or earlier, Greek, figures, which serve as a prototype for these very early Good Shepherd images. There is also a marked distinction or evolution between these images and the fifth century Mosaic in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, shown below, in which Christ is shown as a much more Imperial character.

Still, how can we account for the void in images around this subject following this period until deep into the Baroque period? In fact it seems I am not the first to have wondered upon this mystery, and many (if not all) of the observations I make here are in light of this blog post.

Mosaic in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia

I won't reiterate the points made there, adapted from “A Note on the Disappearance of the Good Shepherd in Art,” by Boniface Ramsey. But suffice to say that in one direction it became less relevant theologically, and politically - as the nature of heresies the Church combated evolved, and as the Church itself evolved from a persecuted few to a self-confident political force. We have in any case a wonderful interplay between how Christians felt about their own status and their faith in Christ, what they thought about the Triune God and how they depicted Jesus.

Third Sunday of Easter

The Gospel reading for today (John 21:1-19) - the Third Sunday of Easter, and our group's message for this week, focuses now on another of the risen Christ's appearances to the disciples, this time upon the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

We have three paintings today, almost as varied as the scenes they portray.

Christ's charge to Peter (Raphael)

The first image is an undeniable celebrity -  one of the earliest of Raphael's cartoons of the set created for the tapestries hung in the Sistine chapel. In fact this is the blurring of two Gospel accounts concerning St Peter: with his left hand Christ points towards the keys of the kingdom of heaven (recalling Matthew 16:19); with his right he gestures towards his flock, 'feed my lambs' (John 21:15).

Between them these accounts represent a substantial part of the basis of Petrine primacy - and consequently making it a reasonable choice of subject for a vast and dramatic tapestry hung in the Vatican. There is even an 'English connection' to these cartoons - acquired in 1623 by the future King Charles I for the modest (though, ironically, also princely) sum of £300; the cartoons now hang in the V&A museum.

Peter's Deinal (Carl Hienrich Bloch)

Though not a part of the day's Gospel account Peter's denial of Jesus following his arrest in Gethsemane looms large in the background. One reason for choosing this image, over Rembrandt's or Caravaggio's is the prominence given to the charcoal fire - a detail specific to John's gospel and a detail which returns in the reading today where it becomes the setting of Peter's restoration.

Crucifixion of St Peter (Ventura Salimbeni)

The week's collection of paintings end on a rather morbid tone - but then, so does the week's Gospel: 

 "Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go.” (This he said to show by what death he was to glorify God.) And after this he said to him, 'Follow me.' " (John 21:18)

There are no shortage of depictions of this scene, the most recognizable by Michelangelo, Reni or Giordano. Obviously all are good choices, but I was carried by the intensity and slightly feverish quality of Salimbeni's depiction of the mingling of heaven and earth in the Saint's final moments.

Easter Sunday

And so, after clambering through Lent we stand at the pinnacle of the liturgical year, surveying all we have done (or not done) with perhaps somewhat weary eyes. What better way to rejoice than with a some images of the Resurrection made a long time ago? In fact we'll look particularly at two images of the Resurrection today: one Early Renaissance painting and one of the truly, well, iconic, pieces of Greek iconography.

First our painting, and this week we have The Resurrection, by Piero della Francesca, one of the most recognizable depictions of the Resurrection in western art - famously described by Aldous Huxley as 'the greatest painting in the world' - and certainly a most enigmatic composition.

The starting point of the composition is the Medieval image of the risen Christ standing on the tomb, surrounded by Roman guards. This image emerged specifically in Western art around the eleventh century and by way of illustration we have an image from a Sarum missal from the 13th Century (for details see here).

Returning to our painting, maybe the most curious feature is the double perspective - both the center of the tomb and the face of Jesus form vanishing points - as if we are seeing two incompatible scenes, one earthy, the other divine being forced destructively together. In the upper scene there is another division - left to right: the scene of desolation becoming one of springtime, the figure of Christ Himself representing the renewal of the Earth, and incorporating a redemptive aspect to the scene more typical in Eastern depictions, more on this below.

Turning to the figure of Christ we find the same contrast and boundaries producing strange anomalies - the figure itself is strong, muscular, but still bleeding. He has a halo, but also wears a ragged beard. We can contemplate His banner - with the cross of divine victory (also associated with St George) or His pink robe, the colour of union in marriage, of celebration, joy and hope.

For more on the details of this composition, there is a great sermon here.

Now, onto our icon. The possibilities for studying and discussing icons is vast, and I admit to knowing pretty much nothing about their study. I'll try and suggest a few words by way of background but for to delve into the language of the symbolism and to start to unravel some of the layers of meaning in an icon I recommend a look around this blog.

Before we get onto the icon proper there is one obvious thing to say, namely, this is not maybe the image that comes to western minds when they think of the Resurrection.  The image that at least first came to mine was more closely captured by the great Renaissance, painting above, and coming from the medieval dramatization that we discussed above.

The Eastern tradition however, as well as other medieval depictions it influenced, place a rather different emphasis on what is taken to be meant by the Resurrection event. From this perspective the Resurrection is a cosmic event - less an isolated historical event, than the (somewhat more mystical) conquest of death itself. Resurrection then refers not only to the physical resurrection of Christ, but of humanity - which takes the foreground as Christ dramatically lifts Adam and Eve from their sepulchers.

Indeed, returning to the icon at hand, we see immediately the peculiar posture Christ adopts - it is a dramatic moment and, for all the variation in the icons of this event, common to them is this sense of exertion, Christ literally pulling mankind from its prison.

Symbols as one might expect come thick and fast - for instance the cross formed by the broken gates of hell, capturing the inversion of the role of the instrument of Christ's death. Or we could study Christ's white robes and rays of God's glory bursting out of the dark colors that often surround him in icons - representing His unknowable and mysterious nature (comparably to icons of the transfiguration for example).

Naturally these two representations, the medieval dramatization and the image of cosmic redemption do not cover the full story of the history of Resurrection art, but have maybe become two central themes. One other aspect I wanted to mention briefly, is in fact one of the most ancient. In both images the 'three Marys' or 'Myrrhbearers' have been lost - but images of them at the empty tomb appear in the very earliest depictions of the Resurrection, going back to the 5th Century and still forms one of the an important type of Resurrection icon.

They also appear in Western art, particularly earlier art, but now in the 'Do not touch me' (Noli me Tangere) scene, which has curiously enough found its way back into eastern iconography. I've included both Giotto's 14th Century depiction and one of the eleventh century Bamberg Apocalypse.

Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.

(John 20:17)