Professional Documents
Culture Documents
All About History - Story of The Bible (2019) - Part12
All About History - Story of The Bible (2019) - Part12
OF CREATIVITY
The compelling themes and stories of the Bible have inspired artists in every genre:
from page to canvas, and from the concert hall to the silver screen
Words by Jon Wright
T
he bookends of Jesus’ life are holding her infant son. The earliest images date from topics and opportunities is, after all, spectacular. The
captured with matchless eloquence the era of the Roman catacombs and the subject Tower of Babel allowed Pieter Bruegel the Elder to
and poignancy by two of the abiding sustained its popularity throughout the medieval display his skill in producing works of extraordinary
images of the Christian artistic tradition. and early-modern centuries, attracting the attention detail and intricacy. Adam and Eve’s banishment
In the Pietà, we see Mary cradling her of painters as gifted as Leonardo da Vinci, Bellini from Eden prompted Masaccio to create one of the
sacrificed son in her lap following the crucifixion. and Rubens. The laurels probably go to Raphael, most devastating portrayals of human shame and
This powerful scene has been portrayed by whose various Madonna and Child paintings are sadness in the whole of western art.
countless artists, with its popularity reaching permeated by a sense of intimacy and tenderness.
a zenith between the 14th and 17th centuries. Many One can almost imagine Mary bouncing the infant THE PERILS OF PORTRAYAL?
of the finest medieval versions are wooden carvings Jesus on her knee. But at the same time, all such Not that the Christian encounter with visual media
in which Mary’s grief and Jesus’s suffering demand images carry a sense of menace. There’s an inevitable has always been untroubled. The early Church
the viewers’ gaze. They embody what the 12th- and disturbing symmetry between the gentle picture was slow to embrace the devotional opportunities
century abbot and theologian Bernard of Clairvaux of Mary with a baby Jesus on her lap and the anguish presented by religious imagery. This reluctance
described as Mary’s “spiritual martyrdom” through that is to come: the moment when the mother derived, in part, from the new faith’s Jewish
the terrible loss of her child. For the Christian, of will one day hold her child in a very different way. inheritance. Judaism had always been on the
course, there was triumph and redemption in the Looking at, say, Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks then lookout for idolatry: those moments when pictures
crucifixion, too, and this is a message hammered turning to a Pietà by El Greco or Rogier van moved beyond their role as tools in worship and
home in perhaps the most famous Pietà of them all: der Weyden can be a haunting experience. became objects of veneration in their own right.
Michelangelo’s imposing Carrara marble sculpture Jesus, as we might expect, has always been This concern was particularly keen in the eastern
in St Peter’s Basilica, completed in 1499. Here, Mary a fixture in art inspired by the Bible and every Christian churches and many Church leaders
is suddenly youthful again, looking almost serene, aspect of his life – from his ministry to the Passion, frowned upon practices such as the kissing of
and the horrors inflicted on Jesus’ body, far less from the miracles to the parables – has been painted icons: some even suggested that flakes of paintings
graphically portrayed, do not provoke feelings of time and time again. Similarly, you would find it were being added to the mix during the making of
revulsion but, rather, of gratitude. difficult to locate a prophet, apostle or noteworthy sacramental bread. The counter-argument was that
Another staple image takes the viewer back to the biblical event that has not inspired some artist or visual portrayals of Christ allowed his human aspect
beginning of Christ’s life. Few periods in Christian other (and most likely dozens of them) to take up to be brought to the fore: an important task if you
history have been able to resist depictions of Mary their pencil, pastels or paintbrush. The range of were a firm believer in the Trinity. Matters came
56
Van Dyck’s depiction of
Christ carrying the cross
57
Raphael’s Madonna of the
Pinks, depicting Mary and
the infant Jesus
59
Bruegel’s intricate painting
of the Tower of Babel
return to the faith during the 1940s. His biblical however, his works in stained glass, which can be
illustrations in gouache, watercolour, ink and pastels found around the world, from Metz and Chichester
are challenging but rewarding works, much like his cathedrals to the astonishing Jerusalem windows
famous Madonna of Port Lligat. Not everyone was that depict the Twelve Tribes of Israel. “To read the
pleased by Dalí’s religious turn: some saw a betrayal Bible,” Chagall explained, “is to perceive a certain
of his earlier radicalism, while some found his light, and the window has to make this obvious
approach to biblical material hard to understand. The through its simplicity and grace.” It was a skill that
Sacrament of the Last Supper carried a mystical Chagall most certainly mastered.
charge for some viewers, but one commentator
could not stomach Jesus being portrayed, as he put WORDS ABOUT THE WORD
it (rather cruelly), as “a sentimental but very good Two streams can readily be discerned in the
athlete on an American baseball team.” visual approach to the Bible: one leads to direct
A more generous reception was granted to Marc representations of biblical events, while the other is
Chagall, an artist obsessed with the vistas opened more about pursuing themes or using the stories as
up by Scripture. He took the trouble to visit a starting point for broader artistic meditation. Much
Palestine in 1931 to soak up the local the same could be said of literature. C S Lewis, an
landscape and there, as he put it, “I found author greatly inspired by the Bible, put it very well:
unexpectedly the Bible and a part of my very “a source gives us things to write about; an influence
being.” Religious painting was a mainstay of prompts us to write in a certain way.”
Chagall’s career, with his ‘Verve’ lithographs, Countless masterpieces have attempted to re-tell
depicting biblical scenes, being one of the biblical stories in new ways, or have used the Bible as
highlights. He may have had Jewish origins, a springboard for flights of the literary imagination:
but Chagall also found power in Christ’s from medieval mystery plays, to Dante’s Divine
story: Jesus’s suffering took on new, terrible Comedy and Milton’s Paradise Lost. The encounter
meaning in an era that witnessed the horrors with biblical material has often defined the parameters
A wooden Pietà, depicting of Stalin’s Russia and the Holocaust. The of a literary career. It permeates the writing of John
Mary and Christ, from crowning achievements of Chagall’s Donne, for example. We find allusions at every turn
16th-century France
extraordinary fruitful career were, – in the essays and poems as well as the devotional
60