Images_006_007 4/28/05 12:22 PM Page 6 Images_006_007 4/28/05 12:22 PM Page 7 Introduction European painting are inevitably also great collections of Saviour and Sacrifice, the sheep and the shepherd, the stumbling block and the corner- A Christian art. In the National Gallery, London, roughly one third of the pictures – stone – paradoxes resonant and powerful in language, but almost impossible to paint. and many of the finest – are of Christian subjects. This is hardly surprising, for after The word has universal authority, acknowledged and asserted from the beginning. The classical antiquity, Christianity has been the predominant force shaping European image is always individual and specific, forced to opt for one aspect only out of the many culture. It is central to the story of European painting, preoccupying artists from Duccio that we know exist. Two illustrations show the extremes of the problem and the extreme to Dalí, inspiring some of the supreme masterpieces of all time. solutions advanced by different Christian traditions. In the seventeenth-century English Yet if a third of our pictures are Christian, many of our visitors now are not. And it is Protestant church of St Martin Ludgate in the City, a Baroque Italianate altar houses not clear that for most this is a difficult inheritance. In part this is because the pictures, made an image, but the Word of God – the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer (fig ). to inspire and strengthen faith through public and private devotion, have been removed This is in every sense the authorised version of the faith of the Old and New Testaments, from the churches or domestic settings for which they were intended and hang now and a monument to that enduring anti-pictorial tendency which runs from the earliest in the chronological sequences of the Gallery, not to the glory of God, but as part of a Church to the Byzantine iconoclasts and the Protestant reformers: only the Word. The narrative of human artistic achievement. little print by Theodore Galle (contents page) puts the traditional Roman Catholic case Worse, addressing questions of slender concern to those of other – or no – beliefs, in defence of representation. It pleads not just for the image, but for lots of images: they seem to many irrecoverably remote, now best approached in purely formal terms. artists try to paint Christ, just as Christians must try to imitate him, but every artist But this is surely to risk losing the heart of the matter: Piero della Francesca’s Baptism inevitably shows a different vision. Images are inadequate, but the answer is not to ban (fig. ) is of course a marvel of harmony and balance, an epitome of compositional them but to multiply to infinity the opportunities for contemplation that they afford. values, but it was conceived as an exploration of the central mystery of the Christian It is, in fact, the very difficulties Christian artists have had to resolve that makes fig 2 Altar and reredos with Commandment faith – the total fusion of the human and the divine. It is also a theological triumph. it possible for these images to speak now to those who do not hold Christian beliefs. Panels, 1680s.St Martin Ludgate,City of London. The church was designed by Sir Christian artists confronted one great problem. They had to make clear that when repre- The aim of this exhibition and book is to focus attention on the purpose for which Christopher Wren. the works of art were made, and to explore what they might have meant to their original senting an historical event – the life and death of Jesus – they were not just offering a viewers. We have put some of the Gallery’s religious pictures in a new context, not – as in record of the past but a continuing truth; we the spectators have to become eye-witnesses other exhibitions – beside works by the same artist or from the same period, but in the to an event that matters to us now. Theological concepts must be given human dimen- company of other works of art which have explored the same kinds of questions across sions and if only words can tackle the abstract mysteries, paintings are uniquely able to the centuries. A new neighbour for a painting allows us to have a different dialogue with address the universal questions through the intelligence of the heart. it, and that usually leads to the discovery of a picture even richer and more complex than In the hands of the great artists, the different moments and aspects of Christ’s life the one we thought we already knew. become archetypes of all human experience. The Virgin nursing her son conveys the fig 1 Piero della Francesca, The Baptism of Our focus is the Collection in Trafalgar Square, which ranges from to ,but feelings every mother has for her child: they are love. Christ mocked is innocence and Christ, 1450s. Egg on poplar, 167 x 116 cm. we have borrowed over a much wider time range – from the early Christians to Graham goodness beset by violence. In the suffering Christ, we encounter the pain of the world, London, National Gallery, ng 665. Sutherland. Foreign lenders have been outstandingly generous, but we have tried to and Christ risen and appearing to Mary Magdalene is a universal reaffirmation that borrow mostly from the public collections of the United Kingdom. That we are able to love cannot be destroyed by death. These are pictures that explore truths not just for put the exhibition on at all – and free of charge – is thanks to the generous support of Christians, but for everybody. The Jerusalem Trust and The Pilgrim Trust. Rather than presenting Christ’s life in art, the exhibition and book look at the diffi- Neil MacGregor culties Christian artists have had to confront when representing Jesus – God who Director of the National Gallery became a man. They look not at the theological intricacies of the Incarnation, but at the pictorial problems it led to: deciding what Jesus looked like (for we have no records), how his suffering could be shown as not just personal but cosmic, how his human and divine nature could both be made clear at the same time. Biblical texts, commentators and mystics often solve this kind of problem by indicating the ungraspable nature of God through contradiction: he is both the Prince of Peace and the Suffering Servant, I I The Nativity at Night, late fifteenth the Nativity, the Netherlandish artist, Geertgen, draws on the century I imagery of Christ as light or the Light. Saint John says of Christ that he is ‘the true Light, which lighteth every man’ (J : ) and the artist has centred the composition Geertgen tot Sint Jans (about /; died on the tiny figure of the Christ child from whom radiance emanates. The light dispels about /) the immediate darkness to illuminate the sides of the stony crib, the hands and faces of Oil on oak panel, x . cm. (cut on all the awestruck angels, and the sweet-sad, wondering countenance of his mother. Christ’s four sides). divine light outshines all other sources of illumination in the picture, even the glowing London, National Gallery, angel in the background announcing the Saviour’s birth to some shepherds. The angel, in turn, has made the light of the campfire seem insignificant. To distinguish the light which Christ emits from all the other sources, Geertgen makes the rays beaming from Christ more emphatic and, although they are now somewhat faded, they would once have been much more visible. The notion of the Christ Child emanating divine illumination was well established in Geertgen’s time and is clearly articulated in the Revelations of the fourteenth-century mystic, Saint Bridget of Sweden (‒), who had a vision of the baby radiating, ‘such an ineffable light and splendour that the sun was not comparable with it, nor did the candle that Saint Joseph held there shine any light at all, the Divine light totally annihi- lating the natural light of the candle.’ Many artists were inspired to paint the Nativity in accordance with Saint Bridget’s vision and the increasing competence of painters in rendering light effects in oil meant that the metaphor of Christ as light could be treated very powerfully, as in this painting. By comparison the use of an inscription is visually much less effective (fig. ). Geertgen’s picture is one of several versions of a similar scene, based on a lost original by the Netherlandish painter Hugo van der Goes (active ; died ). Geertgen’s version differs from its model both in some details (for instance, Joseph is shown here placing his hand over his heart and not shielding a candle), as well as in its emphasis: the darkness is more profound, the child smaller and more fragile, and the animals larger. These elements allow Geertgen to suggest the deep mystery of the Incarnation, while his Paris Bordone, Christ as the Light of inclusion of stems of corn from a sheaf, barely visible in the darkness, in front of the crib the World, between 1540 and 1560. Oil on are surely an allusion to the Eucharist, reminding the spectator that the Christ Child has canvas, 90.8 x 73 cm. London, National been sent into the world not only to be the light but also to become the ‘bread of life’. Gallery, ng 1845. The painting is inscribed ego sum lux mundi, ‘I am the Light of The small size of the painting would have made it appropriate for use in private the World’. devotion and the open space in the foreground seems to invite the viewer to participate in the crib-side meditation.