iconography, Christian The subject of Christian iconography is
the pictorial or symbolical representation of Christian ideas, persons, and
history. It is not a form of aesthetic criticism, but, like archaeology, an
auxiliary to historical and theological studies.
The earliest Christian art was mainly symbolical. Christ was
represented by a fish (ichthus) or a
young shepherd, a ship symbolized the Church, an anchor hope or salvation, a
peacock immortality. Pictorial scenes, drawn from the Bible or the apocryphal
literature, were also typical, not merely illustrative, e.g. Jonah’s story
symbolized death and resurrection.
From the time of Constantine, Christian art could display Christianity
triumphant. Under the influence of Neoplatonic aesthetics, which saw art as
disclosing a higher, spiritual realm, the conscious symbolism characteristic of
icons in the narrower sense developed. The chief descriptive monuments of the
period are catacomb painting, church mosaics, and sarcophagi. Already there can
be detected a difference of emphasis between E. and W., the E. stressing the
liturgical function of art, whereas the W. regarded art as providing pictorial
illustrations of biblical events and religious doctrines. Byzantine churches
often exhibit a planned system of stylized and didactic decoration, covering
the whole interior. After the Iconoclast Controversy this plan was adapted more
precisely to the liturgy and became traditional in the E.
In the W., partly under the influence of a growing devotion to
Christ’s sacred humanity, a more realistic, less symbolic style of art began to
develop from the 12th cent. Gothic cathedrals, by their sculpture, glass,
paintings, and textiles, were encyclopedias of theology, history, hagiography,
natural history (moralized, after the bestiaries), learning (the seven arts),
morality (following Prudentius’ ‘Combat of Virtues and Vices’), and the trades
and crafts. All activity, this indicated, is religious. While individualism had
some play and not all art was didactic, art commonly conformed to a pattern
determined by the Church. This was partly based on, partly explained by, the
encyclopedic writings of Honorius ‘of Autun’, Bartholomaeus Anglicus (c.1250), and, above all, Vincent of
Beauvais, which developed the work of Isidore of Seville and Rabanus Maurus.
Such a cathedral as Chartres demonstrates a highly organized scheme of
decoration. In the 14th cent. art grew less intellectual and more emotional or
mystical. In the next cent. it became frankly realistic and picturesque.
Didactic schemes were already dissolving when the Renaissance killed medieval
methods. Since then there have been many experiments in both realism and
symbolism, but, while religious art still abounds, it is impossible to discern
any dominant tradition or system in Christian art and symbolism. (“Iconography,
Christian,” in The Oxford Dictionary of
the Christian Church, ed. Andrew Louth, 2 vols. [4th ed.; Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2022], 1:944-45)
images The use of any representations of men,
animals, and plants, whether carved or painted, was prohibited in the Mosaic
Law (Exod. 20:4), because of the danger of idolatry. In other parts of the OT,
however, images are mentioned, such as the brazen serpent made by Moses himself
(Num. 21:9), the Cherubim standing over the Ark of the Covenant (Exod.
25:18–22), and the carvings in Solomon’s Temple (1 Kgs 6:18–35). From the time
of the Maccabees, however, and prob. earlier, the Palestinian Jews observed the
Second Commandment rigorously, at least as far as the Temple was concerned,
though it appears that pictures were used to decorate synagogues. There is no
mention of imagery in the NT.
The earliest known Christian pictures are the paintings in the catacombs,
some of which date from the end of the 2nd cent. After the period of the persecutions
sacred images came to play an increasingly important part in the cultus, esp.
in the E. This met with opposition from Eusebius of Caesarea and Epiphanius,
among others, but it was justified by stressing the theological significance of
the incarnation in which God had become visible by taking human nature. After
the Iconoclast Controversy of the 8th and 9th cents, and its final settlement
in favour of icons, these have continued to be an integral element in Orthodox
religion, whether public or private, in which they are given a much more
important place than in the W. Church.
In the W. the veneration of images, which at an early age began to
comprise also statues, made much slower progress. It was given a doctrinal
basis by the Schoolmen, esp. Thomas Aquinas, who developed its theoretical
justification on the lines laid down by the E. theologians, applying Basil’s
principle that the honour paid to the image passes on to its prototype, a
principle which had already been accepted by the Second Council of Nicaea
(787).
In the 16th cent. the abuses which had grown up around the use of
images in the later Middle Ages led to the practice being violently opposed by
the majority of the Reformers, esp. Zwingli and Calvin, who were followed by
the Puritans. The Lutherans were more tolerant of the practice, and to this day
the crucifix is retained in the Lutheran churches. The Council of Trent defined
that due honour should be paid to images of the Lord, the BVM, and the other
saints, on the ground not of any virtue inherent in the image, but because in
it the person represented is venerated. This veneration is allowed only to
images of actual human persons, not to such symbolical representations as that
of God the Father as a venerable old man or the Holy Spirit as a dove, and
similar devices. (“Images,” in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. Andrew Louth, 2
vols. [4th ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022], 1:951)
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