Some
things to ponder as Christmas Day draws near.
For the art work mentioned by Father John Strickland in his post below,
please visit his blog (linked at the end).
. . .
Art
says a great deal about a culture’s values. The art of the renaissance was an
expression of the new humanistic values of a western Christendom beginning to
liberate itself from the pessimism of the middle ages. Its goal was to affirm
and celebrate the human condition in a world that was increasingly seen as
bereft of paradise. The late medieval world of western Christendom was a
bereaving world, and the optimistic humanism of the renaissance offered
consolation. A visual expression of this was the image that came to be known as
the Madonna. Tenderly holding her child in her arms, Mary came to represent as
much a statement about the value of motherhood and parental devotion as a
proclamation of the incarnation of God.
This
shift is visible particularly in the image of Jesus. Increasingly, he came to
be represented as a charming babe, or “baby.” The fact that the modern English
diminutive of babe became the standard term for this image is significant. The
personhood of Christ came to express predominantly worldly and even sentimental
values.
Beginning
with the renaissance biographer Vasari, western views of art history long held
that the depiction of Jesus in Byzantine and early medieval iconography
represented a deficiency in technical skill and human experience.
The
man-like “little adult” of the Hodegetria icon was seen as the best an overly
ascetical society like early Christendom could do. And after all, since most icons
were painted by monks with little or no knowledge of women and children, how
could they be expected to capture the appearance of an infant naturalistically?
But
that of course had not been the point of traditional Christian iconography of
Mary and Jesus. Proclaiming the incarnation, it had insisted that the real
humanity of Christ was joined without confusion to his divinity, and that this
uniting of the world with heaven was the great hope, and optimism, of the
Gospel.
Now,
in the renaissance, a marked change occurred. Christ’s divinity, while
scrupulously upheld in Roman Catholic and later Protestant doctrine, was slowly
erased in art to favor his humanity. As renaissance painters such as Leonardo
da Vinci (d. 1519) applied the principles of humanism against the perceived
pessimism of the late medieval west, they became increasingly lost in a
celebration of the natural world.
Into
this environment the sentimentalized “Baby Jesus” was born. Many painters even
went so far as to abandon iconographical decorum by depicting Mary’s child
nursing at the breast.
Leonardo
was one of them, and his beautiful Litta
Madonna is one of the most famous of renaissance paintings. The
painting (it is not an icon in the liturgical sense) shows a sleepy-eyed Jesus
staring blankly at the viewer. He is completely naked, and powerless. He has no
halo. Nor does his mother, who gazes downward serenely in a moment of maternal
adoration that is oblivious to any future suffering and need for victory over
the brokenness of world.
From
this, it was perhaps only a matter of time before the secularized image of Baby
Jesus became almost purely an object of sentiment, worthy of mass reproduction,
commercialization, and even banal games of child-rearing.
Source: https://johnstrickland.org/2016/12/08/what-child-is-this-or-on-the-rise-of-baby-jesus/,
opened 23 Dec. 2016
--
Holy
Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the
Souð!
Anathema
to the Union!
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