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The Art of Faith 
 Exploring Sacred Images
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14 ~ Learning to Look

9/17/2012

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Artists created Christian works according to strict standards, so looking at a work of art centuries later can be puzzling or profound. It depends on how much information you gather and how the art affects you personally. Looking at Christian art, you can use some or all these questions to analyze an artist’s approach, a work’s meaning, and your response to it.
  1. What is the work’s title? What insight does it lend to the content?
  2. Who was the artist? Do you know anything about this person? If so, what? How might his or her life and other art affect this work?
  3. When did the artist create the work? If you know anything about this time period or art era, how might it have affected the artist or the work of art?
  4. What materials did the artist use to create this work? What did these materials contribute to its overall presence?
  5. How would you describe the artist’s style? Why might he or she have chosen it?
  6. How did composition, color, line, shading, perspective, and other elements or techniques contribute to the overall work?
  7. What was the purpose of this work? If you don’t know, what would you guess it to be?
  8. Was this work commissioned by a patron? How might this have affected the outcome?
  9. If figures appear in the work, who are they? What do you know about them? Or how could you learn about them? Why were these figures meaningful to Christians?
  10. What was the setting for the figures? What did this location contribute to the work?
  11. What symbolism exists in the work? What did it mean to Christians of this era?
  12. Was this work of art based on a biblical story or passage? If so, what was it? Why was it significant?
  13. Can you discern a lesson or message in the work of art? If so, what is it?
  14. How does this work qualify as Christian art?
  15. What is your opinion of the work? Do you like it? Why, or why not?

Learn more about Christian art in Judith Couchman’s book, The Art of Faith: A Guide to Understanding Christian Images (Paraclete).


 


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13 ~ What Does the Trinity Look Like?

9/13/2012

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The Trinity by Rublev
Compared to other practicing religions of the first century, Christianity bloomed late. Converted during the reign of Roman Emperor Tiberius, the first bands of Christians in the empire looked absurd pitted against the mythical figures staring at them from imperial art and architecture. These gods, goddesses, and super humans stood on thousands of years of belief and worship, with hoards of their images reproduced in public and private venues, even on household objects. Christians worshiped a man crucified by the Romans, and had nothing visually to show for it.           

Christians claimed they worshiped one God in the form of three persons. But pagan Romans couldn’t envision relying on only one god. Roman citizens fearfully worshiped a host of finicky, unpredictable deities. They revered and appeased these gods so hopefully the empire and their lives would be safe and prosperous. Consequently, the pagans asked, “How could one god encompass three divine beings?” This “contradiction” didn’t make sense. Weren’t they really just three gods?

This is the mystery of the godhead. The one, true God of the Jews chose to express himself to the world as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Athenagoras, a second-century apologist explained, “Christians know God and His Logos [Word]. They also know what type of oneness the Son has with the Father and what type of communion the Father has with the Son. Furthermore, they know what the Spirit is and what the unity is of these three: the Spirit, the Son, and the Father. They also know what their distinction is in unity.”

To explain the Trinity, Byzantine and Orthodox artists drew from the Old Testament story of three strangers visiting Abraham (Gen. 18:1-8). They illustrated the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as angels. Following this artistic tradition, the beautifully painted icon of the Trinity by Andrei Rublev has taught and inspired believers since the fifteenth century. The delicate colors and features introduced a lovely and accessible godhead. Many today display it as an expression of hospitality.

Because Jesus was God-in-the-flesh, in Christian art images of him vastly outnumbered those of God or the Holy Spirit. Jesus visited earth in human form, offering a visual concept that generations understood and communicated artistically. Paul explained, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Col. 2:9). In this bodily form, Christians witnessed the divine.

Read more about Christian art in Judith Couchman’s book, The Art of Faith: A Guide to Understanding Christian Images (Paraclete).


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12 ~ What Would Jesus Do (in Art)?

9/9/2012

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Jesus Calls the Disciples by Duccio
What did Jesus do? In the fourth century, pilgrims to Jerusalem obsessed about this question. They wanted to not only see, but experience the places where Jesus lived and died. Devout pilgrims wanted to “walk in the footsteps of the Master” and respond with emotion and devotion.

In the fourth century Paula of Nola explained, “No other sentiment draws men to Jerusalem than the desire to see and touch the places where Christ was physically present, and to be able to say from our very own experience ‘we have gone into his tabernacle and adored in the very places where his feet have stood.’”

Every week Christians gathered to reenact the Thursday through Sunday events of the Passion. Pilgrims wept, prostrated, worshiped, communed, and imagined themselves agonizing with Jesus as he prayed in the garden, stood before Pilate, and hung from the cross. These believers wanted to imitate Christ.

Realistically, a Holy Land pilgrimage offered a few Christians a once-in-a-lifetime itinerary and spiritual high point. Being like Christ required a daily commitment to his teachings. For this, faithful followers listened to stories about his life and the apostles’ letters to the earliest Christians. Each Sunday priests read pages that admonished them to emulate Christ in their spiritual devotion and everyday relationships.

In the same century as Paula’s pilgrimages, Church leaders collected these writings into a canon of approved Scripture, the New Testament. Artists enhanced people’s motivation to walk with Christ by illustrating the people and events of this newly formed Testament. During the eras when most Christians couldn’t read, these images acted as visual Scripture. Looking at Jesus pulling a fearful Peter from the water reminded them not to fear. Observing the prodigal son embracing his father taught them forgiveness.

Centuries later, as literacy expanded, visual interpretations of the New Testament increased, too. Word and image powerfully taught the imitation of Christ.     

Read more about Christian art in Judith Couchman’s book, The Art of Faith: A Guide to Understanding Christian Images (Paraclete).

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11 ~ The Art of Borrowing Images

9/6/2012

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The Domitilla Catacomb Shepherd
In the subterranean world outside Rome, artists painted a young shepherd holding a lyre and sitting on a rock, surrounded by gazing and grazing sheep. He luxuriated on a wall in the Catacombs of Domitilla, a resting place for the bodies of Christians from the third and fourth centuries.

For followers of Christ, the Domitilla shepherd represented Jesus as a shepherd, based on New Testament metaphors. But for Roman pagans, the telltale harp recalled the mythical figure Orpheus, who charmed the beasts with his singing. Consequently, the Orpheus-Christ fresco, though simply rendered and presented, represented the complexity of early Christian art.

During the advent of Christianity, classical Roman art prevailed. Whether pagan or Christian, artists painted and sculpted according to this style. It epitomized the definition of good art. The best models of classical art—the rounded, idealized body—emerged from representations of Roman gods and goddesses. So it’s natural that early Christian art mimicked this style, creating figures similar to pagan models.

In addition to style, the earliest Christians borrowed common themes from the Roman culture. These themes helped pagans and other non-Christians to understand core messages of the growing faith. Consequently, Christian art compared Christ to the pagan shepherd, a god of light, and a wise teacher or philosopher.     

In other adaptations in the Roman Empire and the Holy Lands, Christians used less-controversial symbols in the culture to express Christian beliefs. Christians converted pagan images of anchors, ships, and stars into images of the new faith. As a result, early Christians viewed their art in light of redemptive adaptation. Christian artists of Late Antiquity adapted what their culture understood and redeemed these images by assigning new meanings to them. With time, the adaptations represented biblical beliefs incorporated into Christianity’s own visual lexicon. Christian images and symbols meant what Christians believed about them.

Biblical Salvation Themes
Besides Roman themes, early Christian art also heartily pulled from Old Testament and Apocrypha stories and events in Christ’s life. While the Church endured intermittent persecutions, art themes centered on metaphors for salvation. These themes decorated catacomb walls, memorializing the deceased and encouraging the living. In particular, the stories of Jonah, Noah, Moses, Abraham, and Daniel relied on a redemptive message, as did less-popular images such as Susanna or Daniel and his friends in the furnace. So did New Testament stories like Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.

It’s commonly supposed that Christians chose these narratives for the catacomb walls and sculpture because they lived in an uncertain world, at times fraught with persecutions. The most frequent images emphasized God’s ability to deliver his spiritual children from peril, either on earth or in heaven.

In the fourth century, after Constantine’s intervention, deliverance and safety images diminished and Christian mourners selected more narratives from the New Testament. Perhaps it’s because Christians no longer lived in peril, and more believers were Gentiles rather than converted Jews. During Constantine’s reign and later when Theodosius I declared Christianity the Roman Empire’s state religion, Christian art flourished. 

With this transition, Christians and their art breathed freely in the Roman world and ventured into new cultures, extending into the future and finally reaching ours.

Learn more about early Christian art in Judith Couchman’s book, The Art of Faith: A Guide to Understanding Christian Images (Paraclete Press).
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10 ~ Becoming Thoroughly Christian

9/3/2012

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The Columns of Santa Costanza
When Princess Constantina died only fourteen years after her father Emperor Constantine’s death, Romans memorialized her with a royal mausoleum. Constantina was a Christian, but the circular, domed building contained no overt symbols that signified her faith. The tomb’s mosaics represented common pagan motifs: cupids, birds, foliage, grapevines, drinking vessels, and depictions of winemaking. At best, pagans claimed these Roman themes as a celebration of Bacchus, while Christians viewed the images as reminders of Christ’s Last Supper cup.

Visitors to the mausoleum, later transformed into the Church of Santa Costanza, can puzzle over the images if they don’t know about Constantina’s two arranged marriages to pagan rulers, and the religious syncretism in fourth-century Rome. Christianity and paganism co-existed and even mingled in art, culture, and religious practices.

At one point art historians noted that midst the putti (cherubs) picking, transporting, and stomping grapes on the mausoleum’s ceiling, the building’s four niches suggested the form of a cross. Artists color coordinated the twelve pairs of columns in red and green marble to highlight the points of a cross. It’s as if the cross quietly but securely superseded the pagan and syncretic activity, taking a revered place above it all.

When looking at early Christian art, people sometimes drew their own conclusions. Was it Christian or pagan or both? Mixed images and metaphors kept them guessing. But as sacred art developed, artists and patrons erased doubt about its origin and meaning. For the most part, Christian art became thoroughly Christian.

Toward the end of the tenth century, Gero, the archbishop of Cologne, Germany, commissioned a crucifix for his cathedral that demanded attention to Christ’s death. Over six feet tall, the painted wood sculpture featured a lifeless Christ still hanging on the cross. Christ’s skin sagged from holding the body’s weight and his stomach bulged. His head hung down, with the cratered eyes and contorted lips of prolonged suffering.

Later in the fourteenth century, the artist Giotto di Bondone painted a barrel-vaulted room built over Roman ruins in Padua, Italy. It functioned as a family chapel. Walking toward the altar, the life of Mary and the story of her Son lined the walls, divided into rectangular panels. Giotto successfully distilled each image into an emotionally complex yet unmistakable scene. Viewed vertically, each set of three images foreshadowed or related to the others. Wherever visitors carefully stepped in the Scrovegni Chapel, however close they scrutinized the Gero crucifix, they didn’t doubt. This was Christian art. It poignantly expressed Christian beliefs.

Through many centuries and styles, from Late Antiquity through the Baroque, this creativity promoted the Church’s doctrines, morality, and history. Didactic and symbolic, narrative and representational, Christian art taught, chastised, encouraged, reminded, and celebrated Christians. But mostly, it told and retold the miraculous story of Christ.

Learn more about Christian art in Judith Couchman's book, The Art of Faith: A Guide to Understanding Christian Images (Paraclete Press).
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    Judith Couchman is an author, speaker, and college art-history instructor. Her recent book release is The Art of Faith: A Guide to Understanding Christian Images (Paraclete Press). Scroll down to view the book cover and video trailer.

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    The Art of Faith: A Guide to Understanding Christian Images by Judith Couchman. Click on the photo to purchase the book through Paraclete Press.
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    The Mystery of the Cross by Judith Couchman. Inspirational readings about images of Christ's cross and how early believers used and respected this sign. Click on the photo to purchase from InterVarsity Press.