The First Christian Art and its Early Developments - Lord Richard Harries

good afternoon everybody it's very good to be with you again I'm very much looking for to sharing this course of lectures with you now nearly all the very earliest Christian art that has survived as in the Roman catacombs and we have art there from the sort of third to the fifth century under the streets of present-day Rome and of course many of you will have have visited them just to remind you of course they were not places where Christians huddled away from persecution they were Christian burial places and it's not surprising therefore that actually what we have above all our inscriptions about 45,000 inscriptions have survived from that very early period more than half in Rome and 75% are of a funeral nature and 13% of these have an unambiguous Christian symbol and they're obviously we have an unambiguous Christian symbol from the 3rd century with the Alpha and the Omega and the p4 pax on a cross but of course symbolism developed and became more sophisticated yeah we have a burial plaque to a lady called Antonio and if you look at the top you can see the the letters there for the O I n I a right up at the up at the top there yeah there we are not see Antonia and of course there we have an anchor the anchor was a symbol of hope in the Roman world and it was taken over by the Christians as a symbol of hope but also it forms a rough cross rather odd two little fishes the meaning for this seems dubious to be connected with what to tallien the theologian said in the second century when he described as as Christians swimming Christians like little fish swimming in the waters of Baptism and holding on to the cross of Christ so there the symbolism gets a little bit more sophisticated and here of course is a very famous early Christian symbol from the catacombs the fish and I'm sure everybody knows that the fish was an early Christian symbol because the first the word a fish in Greece Greek ethos forms the first letters of Jesus Christ son of God Savior that's why the fish was a an important early Christian symbol and of course here are linked with the multiplication of the loaves or the lows of the Eucharist or a combination of birth or both now what characterizes this very very earliest Christian art is that it simply reflects the style of Roman art at the time and very often at Roman imagery here this fresco of Christ as the good shepherd the good shepherd was an image in Roman art as well as Christian art and you can imagine how Christian eyes lit up when they saw that because it obviously fitted so well with what is said in some John's Gospel I am The Good Shepherd and there are lots and lots of of images of Christ as the Good Shepherd and also we have very famous and rather lovely carvings like this of Christ the Good Shepherd and you can see that it is of the style of any other Roman statuary of the time now here is a non-christian image it is the apotheosis of the Emperor the Emperor being changed and raising rising to heaven it reflects the period in the Roman Empire when the Emperor's were adopting us all the the Sun God so you can see the Rays around the the head there and it was the beginning actually ever some sort of feeling for monotheism in the Roman world in amongst popular religion so that is a thoroughly thoroughly pagan imagine the extraordinary surprise in when last century digging between Under the great churches and Peter's in Rome they saw this and scholars believe this which was found under Sant Peters and dates from the 250 to 275 is actually Jesus depicted in the form of an apotheosis but instead of the the stars but very very like the the stars of the Sun got Sun God they are making slightly more of a of a halo at least that's what scholars who really discovered this and have worked on it do believe the this sort of foliage around here is very very typical Roman mosaic of the time this is a this is a mosaic but that is such a startling illustration isn't it and it shows how far those early Christians were prepared to go in taking over and baptizing Christian imagery now obviously one of the themes above all which Christians in the catacombs wanted to convey to people was the idea of God as a protector remember that at that time of course the Scriptures referred to the Old Testament Scriptures and therefore Christians ransacked the Hebrew Scriptures in order to find imagery which would express their beliefs and this is one which frequently occurs ab daniel in the lion's den dates from the pier the daniel chapters two and three where daniel refused to obey king nebuchadnezzar and worship idols and for that he was thrown into a den of lions but because of god's protection he was kept safe and that's a very familiar image in the very earliest christian art and so is this one also from the book of daniel chapters two and three nebuchadnezzar orders people to worship idols three boys shade rat meat and abednego refused to do so they're thrown into a burning fiery furnace but they are miraculously protected so they wanted to express through these images the idea of God protecting them through the spasmodic persecution at the time the church was persecuted from time to time and very intensely when it was persecuted and also of course through the ordeal of death now in the catacombs after a period towards the end of the second early 3rd century we begin to get images of Jesus and you can imagine why this particular one appeared because it is the theme of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead jesus said in connection with that story in John's Gospel I am the resurrection and the life Jesus was raised from the dead he raised Lazarus from the dead and he could raise those Christians who were buried in the catacombs now one very familiar narrative from that period and eventually after a time they began to develop narrative stories as well as individual images is the jonah cycle over the end there you can see Jonah being thrown off the ship there he's been swallowed by the whale there he's been regurgitated up and here now this is a very very interesting symbol it's Jonah in paradise but of course the biblical story doesn't say anything about Jonah resting under this lovely vine it tells the story of a good which grew up quickly and then shriveled away and he got very fed up with it because it shriveled away so they've slightly twisted the story and they they have focused on this now this is in fact the exact image of the Roman myth of Endymion and Cellini moon-goddess the Endymion was a very beautiful young youth youth the moon fell in love with this this youth as the moon saw this youth sleeping and performed some kind of trick in order to keep that a youth sleeping happily forever so the moon could go on looking at this youth forever this was a Roman myth which was depicted in art just like that and again the Christian eyes lit up and said well this would make a wonderful end to the Jonah cycle of Jonah resting great at peace and with great leisure in paradise so it's another very dramatic dramatic example how those first Christians had no qualms at all about taking over Christian non-christian imagery that they felt expressed their Christian beliefs now there is another one of the Jonah cycle you can see there there's the ship there is the whale and there is Jonah up there the very summit images as well and this brings out a point that not only did Christians express their beliefs in frescoes on the walls of the walls of the catacombs but as soon as they were able they carved them on sarcophagi great stone coffins and this is a stone coffin for an early Christian probably third early fourth century and this again brings out another point very little Christian art from the ninth century has survived why because there was this terrible period known as iconoclasm that ruled and raged on a North for two centuries from the seventh of the ninth century when the Anika I con a class smashed all Christian art that they could get their hands on and obviously as a result of that only if the materials were very durable or very hidden away did they survive and one of the reasons we have a good number of sarcophagi of course is because there's stone and they survive well and here is another sarcophagi very famous one called the sarcophagus of juniors basses which is in the papal Museum in the Vatican I'm not going to talk about all the scenes in detail at the merc this morning that I'm going to be doing that on one of the sarcophagi in another of my talks but this is just to show you that when Christians began to be get a little bit wealthier and a little bit more respectable in society they too could have the same kind of sarcophagi when they died as did pagans and hisses Junius / basses who's on posi who's a Christian who's having a sarcophagus carved in the same way as any Roman gentleman or nobleman but with Christian themes rather than with Roman pagan imagery and here there is another sarcophagus just to give you an example you can see we're not going to talk about this one in detail but you can see for instance down there there is Jesus riding into June to Jerusalem on a on a donkey the scenes of Christ's life and death are told till they're in carvings are on on stone and here is another one which is from Ravenna which still uses very basic Christian imagery there is Christ with the halo and there are Christians surround follow around him and following him palm trees were a ver an ubiquitous symbol of paradise for the early Christians so this is paradise of the palm trees and Christ with his Christian followers now this is a non-christian image this is one of the four turrets those of you who've been to any great museum and looked at Egyptian mummies will have noticed that on mummies from Africa from about the first second third century particularly in Egypt they put a piece of wood where the face would have been and they painted a portrait of the person and this is a far youn portrait of a young man from a mummy obviously died relatively young and you can see that kind of Roman style from the set in the first second third century the same sort of style that you saw in the portraits at Pompeii if you've been to Pompeii now have a look at this one this of course it's aunt Peter one of the very few early icons that survived this is from the sixth century and it survived because it was kept at Sinai and you'll see that there's a very strong stylistic resemblance between the phione portrait and peter so again reflects the artistic style of the of the time I've pressed something that I didn't mean to do but still yeah I'm not quite sure how I get there off that's in a way we'll we'll press on press somebody perhaps James you could just tell me to how to get that off without ruining my whole thing my fingers strayed onto the wrong there we are you carry on right there we are also in Sinai there's a wonderful mosaic of Moses receiving the law Moses taking off his feet before the burning bush and of course they did Moses because Mount Cyprus and Catherine's Monastery and Mount Sinai is built on the place where they thought Moses both saw the burning bush and also received the law and also in Mount Sinai is this wonderful apse mosaic of the Transfiguration the familiar trance figuration imagery which has persisted virtually unchanged from that time right through to the the present and this is very the first very good early example dating from the sixth century from Sonya in the in the church there other icons have also survived at Sinai this is another one from perhaps from a little bit later of the boys in the fiery furnace these images persist though interestingly Daniel in the lion's den and this boys in the fiery furnace do eventually die out they weren't so relevant to later Christians and here you'll see the the angel there because the Book of Daniel says that there was a mysterious angelic figure who was with them protecting them you'll see that the boys seemed to be dressed in a Persian dress and they were taken by the early Christians to be a kind of foretaste of the three may guy who came from Persia in order to worship Jesus and the image of the angel there was interpreted by Christians not just as an angel who would protect us in times of difficulty but that is an image of Christ himself who would rescue our souls from limbo here's just another example of an Ascension of a an icon which is survived a little bit later ninth to the 10th century showing Palestinian influence you see it's less kind of classical in its in its lines if it has its own particular charm of Christ's ascension and then another icon which has survived from there dating from the sixth century of Mary surrounded with by beside her to soldier Saint saying that in the 6th century the person of Mary had begun to receive very great significance and and prominence so those I one's survived and they are to be seen at some catherine's monastery in sinai today what are the material survived the great period of iconoclasm well ivory we have quite a lot of ivory from the first thousand years and this is what's known as a consular diptych when a person was made a Consul in Rome they had an ivory diptych made for them for their time of office and this was obviously reflects a time when that consul was a Christian and so if you look up here you can see across up there and that's an angelic figure too of course now one of the places where there's a magnificent treasury of early Christian art is Ravenna and some of you will have been to Ravenna three great churches to dedicated to stand upon Inari senton papal Inari in Class A or by the port which is this once and Apollinaire nuovo and San Vitale the most wonderful wonderful collection of 6th century mosaics relate from the time when the great Justinian was the Emperor here this is the accent and upon Inari in class II in Class A you can see there the st. here are sheep representing Christians and above there with you you can't see is a figure of Christ and this is is heaven and this is a close-up of it you get a better view of there something some kind of feel for it's wonderful wonderful colors or at all again you see track reflecting paradise those trees those flowers reflecting paradise as of course it is in Islam today green is the color of paradise now that is all relatively straightforward but now when we come to San Vitale we get some even more interesting imagery here is the great emperor justinian surrounded by brick bishop maximus and various deacons and priests and of course it is Justinian at the Eucharist bringing the Eucharistic bread as an offer offering at the you create the Eucharist so intertwined were what we would call church and state it was a Cesaro papal ISM at the time the emperor was seen as God's vice regent on earth and he worked hand in hand with the patriarch of Constantinople and they expressed this by great processions in the great Church of hiya Sophia in Constantinople at which the emperor would bring forth the bread for the Eucharist no less remarkable is his wife Theodora wants a showgirl if not something even more disreputable a very very remarkable lady who saved Justinian's life and indeed the whole Byzantine Empire at that stage simply by have her bravery when her husband Justinian was beginning to show cowardice this is a sort of wonderful mysterious thing you sometimes get in Christian depictions at this time of a curtain being drawn across indicating there is some kind of ultimate mystery behind so Theodora also appears in the great procession at higher Saphir for the Eucharist with her husband now at that time people did not read the Bible in a very straightforward literalistic way the idea of reading the Bible in a sort of straightforward literalistic way would have been totally foreign to most Christians for most of Christian history they thought the Bible had at least four different kinds of meaning allegorical moral and spiritual and goodness knows what else and therefore when they read the Bible stories they were looking always looking for these other kinds of meaning now this is a say is from the church ascent vitally in Ravenna it obviously reflects a time when the Eucharist is of fundamental importance to Christians because we have a Eucharistic table there this is above the Eucharistic table in the church it's a it's a mosaic and you have to Old Testament figures there you have Abel and Abel it said in the Bible he brought forth his offering to God and that's what he is doing and Melchizedek this strange figure Melchizedek we know nothing virtually nothing about he appears in the Old Testament very suddenly after Abraham had won a battle and he simply referred to as a Melchizedek who was priest to the Most High milk is to get the King brought forth bread and bread and wine and he was the priest of the Most High God wonderful mysterious statement seems to have very little context reference to the context the milk kids that came brought forth bread and wine and he was a priest of the Most High God but again you can see how Christian eyes and minds lit up when they saw that and said ah yes this is a prefiguring of the Eucharist and so milk is a deck appears with his offering because he brought forth bread and wine and he was a priest of the Most High God foreshadowing Christ our great High Priest and this is another one of those wonderful sort of symbolic scenes I'll show you a little bit more close-up in the middle but you might as well just get the sort of feeling of how it appears it's in an arc there mosaic art and if we look at it in a bit more close-up I'm afraid I couldn't get a better reproduction of this than this but I hope you can see it but again you got a Eucharistic table and on one side you have Abraham bringing forth his hospitality to three angelic figures and on the other side you have Abraham about to slaughter his son Isaac but being prevented from doing so by by God now Abraham of course was a very very important figure for early Christians prefiguring Christ in all sorts of of ways now this scene this on this this side strings from the Old Testament story where three strangers apparently divine strangers appeared before Abraham and Abraham offered them hospitality and they revealed their divine provenance and the early church took this as a foreshadowing of God as Holy Trinity so this is a very very kind of important image for the early Christians but not only an image of the of the Holy Trinity there this is the Holy Trinity who invites us to share the Eucharist so that is to share in the divine life and some of you will know the wonderful 14th century icon of this scene by Andrew rublyov' perhaps the greatest icon that has ever been painted deeply moving with three angels behind the table so graceful and as it were inviting the your viewer in to share the divine life and to do so through sharing in the divine banquet at the Eucharist now this imagery here of Abraham and of Abel and Melchizedek which we showed before there there and there and there this is still reflected in the Trident yet tread ident words of the Tridentine Latin Mass of the Roman Catholic Church words themselves adapted from the derive from the old Roman Rite this is what the prayer in that Eucharist says except as you agreed to accept the offerings of Abel you're just servant and the sacrifice of Abraham our patriarch and that which your chief priests Melchisedec offered to you a Holy Sacrifice and a spotless victim so you hid see here to so often get in Christian art and Christian history the wonderful sense of continuity that these figures which were very early interpreted as foreshadowing Christ depicted in art from an early stage get reflected in the words of the Eucharistic prayer and continue to emerge in Christian art down the ages now I've showing this one again deliberately because before we concentrated on Justinian in his Eucharistic prayer this is his bishop max Maxima Ana's and what he has here is of course a Bible a wonderfully bejeweled Bible and one of the important points to bring out from this period we're talking about the 3rd and the 4th centuries now in 5th century is that Christianity emerged as a book religion a religion of the book and very often early Christian books are called codices or a codex coming from the word codex meaning a wooden block Judaism was seen as a religion of the scroll and Christianity as a religion of the book and obviously having books rather than Scrolls made illustration Possible's if you illustrate Scrolls they very quickly get rubbed Dorf tanned and damaged but books can contain and safeguard and conserve illustrations in a much more possible way and what we get during this period is what as well being described as the physical ization of the Bible expensive materials were were used you can see the jewels they're an expensive cover and it was used liturgically as you can see it's being brought forward into the Eucharist the Old Testament as we would call it New Testament was seen as a whole with the New Testament superseding the old since we get supersessionism a view which most Christians today are very unhappy with and so in one illustration which I'm afraid I wasn't able to get a copy of but I will just tell you about it in this illustration that illustration Moses appears with the book of the law Mary with Jesus and ecclesia or the church with the Bible and on this express the view that the revealed Word of God in Judaism is fulfilled in Jesus the word and this is brought to us by the church through the Bible the words words of which point to Jesus the word so there we have this physical ization of the Bible and there is a close-up of it and you get even better view of the of the jewels there and its value and we do get some wonderful wonderful copies are of early Bibles this one is known as the Sanofi gospel you can see the sheer wealth of this gold on the page the wonderful printing or rather calligraphy and at the bottom of the page there is always a gospel scene this is Jesus healing the blind man and here's another wonderful gospel from the 6th century the Rosano gospels and this shows jesus raising lazarus and here are Old Testament prophets and they're named and they're pointing through the scriptures with which they're associated to the fact the Jesus who the resurrection the life who would raise the dead so Old Testament New Testament seen as one the one seen as superseding the the other these were wonderfully wonderfully rich and valuable Bibles they could only rarely be commissioned by emperors and of course they also had wonderful covers it's funny that we've gone straight on to that one this is some of you may possibly I'm moving and moving to slightly different period now a rod so different a similar sort of period but moving slightly further to the west because most of the art that I've shown you so far that comes from the Christian East centered on Constantinople the eastern Roman Empire what about the West well of course the West had fallen into a state of disarray because Rome fell to the Vandals in 410 tribes moving across Europe from the east put pressure the various tribes ghosts vandals Visigoths and so on move down and he'd moved all the way down to Spain and pressure from Islam coming up from the south it was a very very difficult period for the West but under Charlemagne who was crowned the first emperor of the Christian Roman Empire in the 800 the Christian West began to recover and it also had an opportunity therefore to express its faith in art which was likely to survive now this is arkin where Charlemagne built his church are the same architectural style of Sint vitaly in Ravenna that I've just shown you and this is the kind of ivory book cover that also came from this period and which survived this is Matthew writing because on these Gospels they also showed like to show that the different gospel writers this is Matthew and here is a otter bucket dated from 862 880 from the period of of Carolingian art you can see a wonderfully carved figures wonderfully valuable but it had a liturgical use and here is another ivory book cover Christ and the apostles dated from 850 to 890 here is another water bucket again from this this sort of period of Carolinian and then later on atonia not because there was another revival of christian art under the auto naeun her Empire Emperor's who came after Charlemagne and here is another ivory plaque or book cover of the women at the at the tomb you can see what wonderful works of art these these are now I'm not going to I'm going to be talking more about Christian art in the West in subsequent talks but I want to just just give you a glimpse and some of the things which were going on in the West under Charlemagne and uh naught Oh what they were really trying to do was to revive the classical Christian art of the time of Justinian and Constantine there was a classical revival under Charlemagne and also under Otto as so often in the past they went back to to classical prototypes in order to revive their own art as of course we did in the West and the time of the Renaissance as well but the classical art that they went back to was not the art of pagan Rome it was the art of Christian Constantine and his Emperor and perhaps even more the art of Justinian in the 6th century and his great Byzantine Empire so you have this Classical Revival then but as I say it is a Classical Revival from those earlier Christian Pier but there was it was a very great period for heart both under Charlemagne and the Otto nians and again from this sort of period books western books this is st. Egbert you can see the kind of some of the kind of books which are being produced and what about even further west and it's all very well going to to France Charlemagne was king of the France francs before he was first Roman Empire what about further further west well this some of you will recognize this this is from the book of kells about eight hundred an initial letter another the ways in which they they made these books works of art of course that they decorated the initial letter of a page in a very very elaborate kind of way and here we have an eagle's head from the same book of hell's with a very characteristic Celtic style now we come on to the the last sort of period that I want to deal with today after this terrible fight between the Econo duels the lovers of icons and the iconic class the destroyers of icons eventually those who loved icons survived and this was a huge triumph for the church is still celebrated as a great feast in the Orthodox Church 843 was the date and in the Church of hiya Sophia if you go to it today and you look in the apse you will see this apse mosaic of Mary like an impress sitting on a throne with the Christ child on her lap and we can date this very exactly because we actually have the sermon which in full which was preached on the occasion of the unveiling of this on Holy Saturday in the year 867 by patriarch photius and although of course it was covered up for a long time when higher Saphir was simply an Islamic Monument it's now been uncovered and you can see something of its glory so the triumph of Orthodoxy in 843 was a hugely hugely significant marker in the early Christian in the development of early Christian art and also in hyah Sophia you can see this little mosaic in an arc and this is significant because this is how they saw themselves this is meant to be just a Constantine who's built the walls of Constantinople and this is just in ian who built the great Church of highest fear in the 6th century and both are making their offerings to the Christ child on the lap of Mary seen very much there as an empress Constantine offering the great city of Constantinople with it's wonderful walls and Justinian offering the church he built to Christ now in this period post iconoclasm we begin to get the firmly sort of settled iconographic scheme for the church in the east which we still have today now one of the first things to note about how they saw the church they saw the church with its decoration as an entrance into paradise for instance is a church in Rome the Church of some cosmas and Damian which is this is the apse mosaic from it which has the inscription on it God's residence radiates brilliantly in shining metier Ariel's the precious lights of the faith in it glow even more and at the entrance to the church in a place called NOLA the bishop pour Linus wrote Christ worshipers take the path to heaven by way of this lovely sward that is this lovely sort a bit of green grass an approach from bright gardens he went on is fitting for from here is granted to those who desire their departure to wholly paradise and so it tears that in so many of these churches you get the flowers the animals the hunting scenes the fish of all of what will be in heaven but of course also much much better now this as I said is the church of some cosmas and Damian and it shows there Christ with one set in a cloud a wonderful wonderful splendor now here which we can't see very very well is the words Jordan and what is this trying to indicate is that this is the River Jordan and we go through the the River Jordan of death in order to achieve the splendor and the brightness and the glory of heaven where Christ already is and is reigning in glory and there's a wonderful saying of the patriarch germaneness who said the church is the earthly heaven in which the heavenly God lives and moves the church is the earthly heaven in which the heavenly God lives and moves and that's why Orthodox churches are most wonderfully decorated when they are at their best in the apse in the dome on the west door frescoes on mosaics round round the walls because you're entering into a foretaste or path through to heaven and this is a foretaste of of heaven so that's the church of some cosmas and Damian and that actually comes quite early that church that is pre iconoclasm but I've because if even before I can't éclairs them it gives you this sense of moving into paradise once you get into the church but if we move actually beyond iconoclasm then a very good example of what we have is this little church at osios loukas dating from the 1020 classic architectural design which emerge at that time across in a square and once you go into these little churches then you look at the apps and the apps will contain a mosaic or a fresco of Mary with the Christ child now this one is one of my favorites it's actually from the apse of a little Church of tour cello which is an island on the Venetian Lagoon what's interesting about it is that many Byzantine craftsmen mosaicism so on from cancer note of noble went in the eleventh and twelve 10th 11th and 12th century to work in Venice and this is clearly the work of Byzantine craftsmen with fundamentally Byzantine imagery showing that the apse of a church very typical decoration at its best then between the apps and the main body of the church would be a chancel screen not the great kind of iconostasis which you may be familiar to from russian churches which run from ceiling to floor and are covered with panels that's a much much later development in the early stages of the church there was simply a panel probably a stone panel like this with some Christian imagery on it these are peacocks drinking from the fountain of the water of life just a low screen to separate the chancel from the the nave and then if you looked up at the top there would be a picture of Christ Pantocrator in the dome Christ the ruler of all things usually a rather severe figure this is from the church Daphne also grew in Greece dating from about the Year 1100 and then if you looked at the round the frescoes just below the dome at the present were around the dome before the dome itself you'll very often see angels and archangels and push that on again don't worry there we are it's gone gone miraculously gone now this is one of my favorites if you've ever been to Cyprus so you go to sight to Cyprus don't forgot to say neglect those wonderful wonderful gems of churches in the Troodos mountains outside they look nothing they're hidden away with great sloping roofs because they needed to hide away from the time of Turkish occupation but inside you get entry into paradise and this is one of my favorite churches from the Church of lagoon era dating from the 12th century now you can see the wonderful flowing lines one of the characteristic features of Byzantine art was the successive classical revivals and this clearly was the result of another classical revival in the 12th century look at those wonderful flowing lines of that most beautiful angel that's the church of Laguna in Cyprus dating from the 12th century then if you look at the corners the squinches those devices which enable the dome to go on the cross in the square you will see in the squinches there the main scenes of Christ's life here obviously is the nativity scene I'm not going to talk about that in detail because I'll be doing so in another one of my talks but again at the moment I'm just a showing trying to show the classical scheme of iconography which grew up and then just to give you an examples what was slightly outside the Byzantine world this is a a Georgian enamel icon again quite an early one from this period if I remember correctly twelve thirteenth century of the presentation of Christ in the temple now you can see that in some way of course it's classical Christian imagery but the style is not classical it's much more kind of folk art lovely colors rather attractive faces of the of the people there in a way quite simple but very very appealing just to remind ourselves that although the influence of the Byzantine world did spread very far there were areas outside it which were Christian and which their Christian faith was reflected in their own style and then in the in the church as you went out out of the West door you may very well have seen a fresco like this so we get in the in the apse the Virgin and Child the dome Christ Pantocrator the angels and archangels the whole company of heavenly hosts in the band round the dome in the squinches the main scenes of Christ's life perhaps around the wall frescoes of their scenes of Christ's life and as you go out of the door in a classical scheme this is what you would see this in Greek is the comb Asus ko imes is or in Latin the Dormition the falling asleep of the Virgin Mary because in the Eastern Church they prefer to talk about the coin basis or the Dormition the falling asleep of the Virgin rather than the Assumption it's being described as the most lovely creation of all Orthodox art you can see there Mary of course lying dead probably it's and John bending over her one of the church early churches I'm going to show you another one of this with because it's Paul at the other end we'll see then what is so lovely its Christ is coming down in order to take the soul of the Virgin up to heaven and there the angels going to help it Christ comes down takes the soul of the virgin and takes the soul of the virgin up to heaven that the Virgin Mary of course and Christian thought at the time and now is as it were a fully ordinary human being in some sense and therefore if she can have her soul taken up by Christ into heaven so can we under the grace of God and this is another example of that same scene the coin basis the last one which I'm going to show you in order to leave some time for discussion and the reason for showing this as well because at one end of this coin basis you always get some Paul you can always tell some Paul of course he has a big domed head that's how you that's how you know that's that's some Paul but as I say what has been described the most lovely creation of the part of the Orthodox Church and I think that's all we need show for the moments I've tried to cover quite a big suite mainly showing the East and the development of the the soul settle scheme of iconography in the 10th and 11th centuries so over to anybody who'd like to ask a question now is they've got a microphone please and we would like to ask a question or make a point I've never known this group of people silent before there's a gentleman there oh that image you showed us of Jonah I will and we remember on the right there was an image of Jonah in heaven as you said well may I suggest that that refers not to Jonah in heaven but to the last episode in the story of Jonah you remember when he sat to look at the destruction of air Nineveh and gourd grew up in a dice and perished in a night might not not be there's episode well that you're quite right that that is that is what it is based on that is the Bible account but what is interesting is that the first Christians did not feel obliged to keep close to the biblical account because the biblical account of the winner the withering of the gore gourd and so on is very very different from that imagery which we which we have there where it is clearly simply blissful and the gourd far from withering up is actually doing its job and actually there's a bit of vine which is covering Jonah so it is extraordinary the kind of creative freedom which they felt that they they had there we might just go back to that if we can go it because you might like just to remind yourself of it there we are you see that I mean the there's a when Thomason claimed that sort of sheer idleness you know that wonderful sheer pleasure shell langa langa that's the word isn't it for Jonah there next question anybody like to ask guess gentlemen here and before I ask a question I'd like to say that uh if anyone is interested in rushed to aya sofya to see the apps it's invisible at the moment behind scaffolding um tells to see worth the identity hostesses weren't going worth going isn't it absolutely even yeah in Roman classical times there was a lot of specialization in the themes that we used and craftsmen seem to have specialized in certain sort of scenes this presumably passed on into early Christian art do we know anything about the craftsmanship of the very first people and who are doing it well I think that the work there were guilds of craftsmen rather as there were in in medieval times and you know special specialist occupations I mean if I'd had time and I wasn't I wasn't able to get hold of the image but there was a special guild of people who who dug those catacombs and probably did a lot of the frescoes called Foss auras or fosters something like that we have a picture of them they were clearly a sort of guild of people we don't know much about them but we do have one little fresco of one which make it quite clear that they were a kind of special character group of people and clearly also the people who carve sarcophagi and what was I suspect that what happened was that as Christianity gradually permeated more society some of these craftsmen would have been converted to Christianity and they would begun to change and do Christian imagery at the behest of their Christian patrons asn't before they had done pagan scenes for their pagan patron one of the very interesting features of the sort of transition period is sometimes you have a half-caff sarcophagus with some beginnings of Roman imagery which has been twisted into Christian imagery for instance it's been been say we haven't got time to show it now it will find it and it wouldn't come up very clearly but the image of Christ riding into Jerusalem on a donkey in the early sarcophagi apparently it's got all the signs of a pagan scene of a boar hunt which had been shot a slightly change to matron so there was this sort of transition period where all things were renewed region and there's a gentleman that young yeah I must apologize for finding this seating terribly comfortable and I hope you didn't mention it but I was wondering about the history of last judgements um I'll be doing a little bit about that when we when I come on to more sort of Western art and in particular when in fact in my next talk which is Jesus in art I will be talking a little bit about last judgments then there because we associate them very much with the Western tradition don't waste and particularly the development of Romanesque art and the the great sort of timpani at the over over the Great West doors and of cathedrals in France as we particularly associate loss judgments with but I mean the Orthodox Church the you have you don't get that very elaborate imagery that you get in the West who knows so and so that not going down to hell and that rock coming up to heaven you don't get that in the same kind of way although in tour cello there is a wonderful great Last Judgement that really I think reflects the fact that tour cello was was was in part the within the Western enclosure even though it was done by Byzantine craftsmen but if you remember that church that I showed you of Daphne with the with the Pantocrator you the figure of Christ a rather Stern figure but you don't get the elaborate kind of imagery that you get in Western last judgments got time for one more question I think so it's just affect you on the way I will seep in ultimate donation with where where did that come from that I think it's I think it's the goodra you know I didn't make a note of my eye my nose let's have another look at it again it's a lovely one isn't it this one or the icon this well that's the last one and that's the panel Fiat 1u that's that's that yes this is it the this this that that's I have a I have a feeling that's legaud room and I'll just check up in which case it would be 12th century looks like 12th century to me that and that was the last one that's a later icon but you can see just you know it reflects the standard iconography what's interesting about the Orthodox Church although in the 19th century oh and indeed since the Renaissance they have been influenced to some extent by Western art always in my view in a way which detracts in the 20th century the author John Church has really recovered its traditional iconography and it's its traditional way of painting and I think it is this more traditional way which appeals to too many of us I think probably will better call it a halt there thank you very much as they next time it's going to be Jesus in art you

Channel: Gresham College

Views: 55,977

Rating: 4.7821784 out of 5

Keywords: Art, Christian Art, Christianity, Roman Art, Jesus Christ in Art, Jesus in Art, Christian, Religious Art, Religion, Lord Harries, Art History, Christian History, Divinity, Gresham College, Gresham, education, free education, lecture, talk, art talk, art lecture, Gresham Professor of Divinity, Professor of Divinity

Id: dcQ9NB3D_ho

Length: 59min 24sec (3564 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 11 2011