Portraying Jesus and Mary: Picturing the Bible's Ethereal and Human Prophets- Michael Brenner

This is the season when tourists flock to museums abroad in search of inspiration or edification. Most are satisfied with registering impressions. A few submit themselves to the tutorial provided by cassette and headphone. The art student dwells on form and technique. Only over time do we stumble across the puzzles, the stories and the inner meanings that elude both casual viewing and scholasticism. 

The realization that something is there that needs explication crystallizes unpredictably. One such encounter occurred while strolling through the Renaissance galleries of the Uffizi. It suddenly struck me that Jesus is invariably portrayed with the same visage and expression. His face is placid, the expression disengaged, the look that of a mild -tempered man who feels for others. Stylization to this degree is understandable in Buddhist representations of Gautama. Still, those convey an inner force, a commanding silence. And, the Buddha has achieved Nirvana. Jesus, though, was of this world - whatever his emanation and spiritual essence. He acted and reacted with others. Yet little if any emotion is evident, even when involved in acts of great drama. The Jesus casting the money changers out of the Temple (a Rembrandt excepted), the Jesus walking on the waters of the Galilee, and the Jesus taking the Last Supper in awareness of what awaited him appear no different from Jesus the pacific soul in more prosaic settings that painters have drawn for us. Of course, the Calvary is a different story - but the puzzle of why such uniformity in other scenes remains.

Prophets are men of passion. They radiate great force. They fire the spirits of their followers. They are charismatic in the true sense. There is no blaze in the eyes of the Jesus shown to us. There is no physical expression whatsoever of whom he is. The Jesus who has come down to us doesn't even stand out among his disciples. If he weren't seated in the center at the Last Supper and crowned with a halo, we'd have to look carefully in order to identify him - in many renderings, anyway.  The Roman authorities had to bribe Judas to identify the scourge of Jerusalem – as it is recounted.  I know of only one painting that deviates from this norm. The Renaissance painter Melozzo da Forli did a stunning Christ portrait that hangs in the Palazza Ducale of Urbino. His Jesus has intense eyes that burn like ice. They bore into you. His Jesus could stir the soul. I suspect that Melozzo had a keen insight into the psychology of prophecy that eluded his fellow artists. He painted the son of God - not a pious saint.

Pictorial representations of Mary observe the same pattern of stylization and emotional neutrality. There is one occasion in the biblical story that allows for deviation from that aesthetic norm - the Annunciation. The young woman (always so portrayed) hearing the stunning message from the heraldic archangel Gabriel reacts with emotions ranging from apprehension through wonderment to awe. This medley of emotions is brilliantly conveyed in the gilded sculpture of Donatello that serves as the centerpiece for the Tabernacle of the Annunziate in the church of Santa Croce, in Florence. Although scenes of the Annunciation leave some room for individual artistic expression, there are still implicit rules that artists have followed. Mary is innocent, she is tender, she is ethereal.

Here, too, I know only one exception. Antonello da Messina, a 15th century painter from Sicily, gave us quite a different Mary. She is an exquisite young lady with a face of refined sensuality. The artist captures her at the first moment she hears the flutter of angel wings at the door. Her expression suggests that she has surmised the message, finds the portending offer less than irresistible, and is prepared to tell Gabriel that the woman he is looking for lives across the street. There is no record of Antonello having run afoul of the ecclesiastical authorities as a consequence of his profane realism. However, a later portrayal of the same lady wearing the same bright blue shawl at the moment of Annunciation suggests that he either suffered a pang of religious conscience or had it pricked for him by the powers that be.  Indeed, it goes to an emotional extreme rarely seen in the Mary iconography.

By the way, why are Mary's eyebrows always plucked? And why does she often sport mascara?

(Prior publishing 7/22/10, Huffington Post) 

 

Comments

[Sidney O. Smith III]

Very funny reference to the Huffington Post. . Symbol font. Very good. At first, I was saying to myself, “My God, he is referring to the Huffington Post in Septuagint Greek.”

But I am glad your sense of humor has returned. Trying to chase women who are Hollywood – I stress Hollywood -- Buddhist, as attractive as they are, may lead you to the first lesson of Buddha. All life is suffering.

Look at it this way. You can rest assured that if Paddy Chavefsky were around today to rewrite “Network”, the character Diane Christiansen would drive a car with a “visualize peace” bumper sticker. And if anyone experienced the Buddha lesson of “all life is suffering”, it wasMax Schumacher.

That aside, I applaud your willingness to look at the West. In fact, upon a first reading of this post, I thought I was reading something by Sister Wendy, except for two points. One, I was somewhat surprised you did not look into the influence of Eastern Orthodox Iconography on Western religious art.

Second, and on a more provocative note: in my opinion, you failed (albeit in this one short essay) to explore the psychological impact of the feminine in art, including, what you have referenced in the West as Marian art. Ultimately it is to lead to a psychological transference away from the family mother and, by doing so, lead to a much greater awareness. Let’s not forget that renaissance does mean reborn. If you are reborn, psychologically, then you have left the family.

If you are more comfortable with Jungian language: your unconscious will start to inform your consciousness through collective symbols in ways that would not take place otherwise.

By and large, many of the traditional institutions which helped with such a transference no longer are successfully fulfilling this function in the West. And that, in no small measure, explains much of the psychological fragmentation taking place within society. This fragmentation is sometimes (heroically) reflected in post modern art.

My guess – and it is strictly a guess -- is that Renaissance artists considered themselves reborn (psychologically, at a minimum) into a higher sense of awareness and it was reflected through the extraordinary power of their art.

Here is one example by a Renaissance artist of the lady you referred to as always depicted in art with plucked eyebrows and sporting mascara.

http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/print/2007/4/pieta-michelangelo.jpg

[rjj]

Tangent to above and from a different POV.

I ask somewhat similar questions: why are these lively stories embalmed and/or banalized? also (just for fun) why is the moneychangers in the temple incident so rarely commisioned?

There is a fifteenth century Antwerp woodcut master whose illustrations for a 1488 Dutch translation of Ludolph of Saxony's Vita Christi are a wonderful mix of piety, wit, and sharp observation -- all economically rendered. His annunciation with a few strokes of the stylus captures the essence of the Virgin's conflict about this clearly dubious honor. Perhaps skepticism should be added to that list of qualities. Will post the scans. They are on another computer.

Another anonymous master, this time patently subversive, is the carver of the Bamberg Cathedral disputing prophets (St. George's choir screen). In a later time he would have been summoned to a sit-down with an Inquisitor.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Dom%2C_Chorschranken%2C_Propheten_2006-03-10.JPG

Any academic will recognize them.

And then there is THIS:

http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Elisabeth_und_Engel_Bamberg.jpg&filetimestamp=20070111125938

Two different hands, the angel by one of the Rheims-trained workmen, Elisabeth, perhaps the Prophet choir screen carver, but the juxtaposition! What the hell was going on in Bamberg???

What about Tilman Riemanschneider's Annunciation and Last Supper? Done by anybody else's hand/workshop this would be kitsch.

http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/1999/riemenschneider/021.htm

http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/images/aria/bk/z/bk-16986-a.z (detail)

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rothenburg_ob_der_Tauber_018.JPG

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_vBKYNvrPutU/SwIoL8sm_II/AAAAAAAABm0/6X8lsh870xY/s1600/IMG_1054.jpg (detail)

An aside .....

Riemenschneider got caught up in a little dispute between hungry peasants and the Prince-Bishop of Wurzbug. He was on the losing side. After the Bishop's mercenaries killed all the peasants, the Bishop had their burgher supporters tortured. Riemenschneider's hands were broken; he would never be able to make any more of these exquisite things. This was in 1525. Within a few years the protestants came along, and, in their righteousness, purged the churches of all this idolatrous bric-a-brac. The carvings went into the bin (were peddled to papists with a taste for the out-of-fashion), the walls were whitewashed, and cathedrals UPDATED into kirks. (Saenredam)

To me this relates to the earlier thread on modernism (with postmodernism as Romantic modernism), which I maintain is only the most recent expression of the ongoing [re]volutions of innovation, elaboration, stagnation, degeneration, reaction, reduction, and it all starts over again. The labels change - Archaic-Classical-Hellenistic (stalling out in Rome for about 600 years); Gothic-Renaissance-Baroque-Romantic. The forms are the manifestations of the interacting spirits of the time, the place, the artist.

This needs more thought and a rigorous edit. No time.