The Image of Christ (National Gallery London) (The Future Fields Commission in Time-Based Media) - Softcover

Gabriele Finaldi; Neil MacGregor; Susanna Avery-Quash; Xavier Bray; Erika Langmuir; Alexander Sturgis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1857092929 ISBN 13: 9781857092929

Publisher: National Gallery, London, 2011

Synopsis

The Image of Christ expresses the view that modern secular audiences can engage with the masterpieces of Christian art at an emotional as well as a purely aesthetic or historical level. This book aims to help the viewer understand these pictures by focusing attention on the purpose for which they were made, and explores what they might have meant to their original viewers. The authors trace how a recognizable image of Christ evolved, starting with the earliest symbols and metaphorical images such as the Sheperd, the Lamb and the Vine. They trace the emergence of a "true likeness," emphasizing the importance of the Veronica, the "miraculous portrait" said to have been imprinted on the cloth held out to Jesus on the way to Calvary. They describe how artists conveyed the paradox of Christ's dual nature-human and divine, weak and powerful, victim and victor-in portrayals of his infancy. They also show how images of Christ's suffering during the Passion were intended to convey a cosmic, not just a personal significance. Artists have attempted to put extremes of suffering and despair into an overal context of hope-a vein of hope that runs from the catacombs to Hiroshima and beyond. These are images that speak, even to those who do not hold Christian beliefs. Artists had to make it clear that in representing the life and death of Jesus they were offering a continuing truth; we the spectators have to become eyewitnesses to an event that matters to us now. As a result, the different moments and aspects of Christ's life become, in the hands of great artists, a reflection of all human experience. The Virgin nursing her son expresses the feelings of love every mother has for her child. Christ mocked in innocence beset by violence. Christ risen and appearing to Mary Magdalene is a universal reaffirmation that love cannot be destroyed by death. Beyond their obvious religious significance, these are paintings that have a universal meaning.

About this title

Review:

The Image of Christ by Gabriele Finaldi is a beautifully illustrated, colourful history of how Christ has been portrayed by artists from the early Church to the present. It is not, however, a life of Christ told in pictures. Instead, the book explores the challenges Christian artists have faced as they have tried to imagine what Jesus looked like. Since no eyewitness descriptions of Jesus' physical appearance survived, the earliest artists' depictions of Christ played on the symbols and images that he used in his parables--such as the Good Shepherd, the Light, and the Vine. Later, artists became concerned with capturing Christ's true physical likeness, based on miraculous relics such as the cloth that Saint Veronica offered him on his way to Calvary, which was believed to be imprinted with an image of his face. These stages in the history of Christian art are described by several art historians in brief essays, each of which is lavishly illustrated. The book, which was inspired by "Seeing Salvation: The Image of Christ", an exhibition at the National Gallery, London, will be treasured by secular and believing readers alike. A deeper understanding of these works' religious context will sharpen viewers' experience of their universal relevance. The dozens of pictures, paintings and sculptures reproduced here bear profound witness not only to the events of Jesus' life, but also to such universal themes as the enduring power of a mother's love for her children, the suffering of innocents and love's triumph over death. --Michael Joseph Gross

Review:

"Engaging . . . a novel approach to [a] seemingly familiar subject . . . insightful."--Jeremy W. H./i> --Jeremy W. H. Arnold "Religious Studies Review "

About this edition

• Publisher: National Gallery, London
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1857092929
• ISBN 13: 9781857092929
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224