Ad Imaginem Dei: In the Divine Image He Created Them

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

In the Divine Image He Created Them

Michelangelo, Creation of Adam
Italian, 1508-1512
Vatican City, Sistine Chapel

God created man in his image;
(Et creavit Deus hominem ad imaginem suam)

in the divine image He created him;
(ad imaginem Dei creavit illum)

male and female He created them.
(masculum et feminam creavit eos.)
Genesis 1:27 in the New American Bible and Latin Vulgate translations.

High above the heads of those who stand or sit in the Sistine Chapel (Rome, Vatican), be they tourists craning upward with open mouths, the cardinals in solemn conclave to elect a Pope or the Pope celebrating Mass, fly the great ceiling frescos of Michelangelo. Painted between 1508 and 1512, by commission of Pope Julius II, these paintings are one of the great monuments of Western art.

In those four years, Michelangelo took a bland, early Renaissance ceiling, painted dark blue with silver stars, and transformed it into a ceiling of majesty, with central scenic panels, divided by illusory architecture and telling the story of salvation from the Creation of Light to the Flood. In the areas between the vaults he also presented the prophets of the Old Testament, the sibyls of the ancient pagan world and the ancestors of Christ.

Probably the most familiar of all the images from the ceiling is the one that illustrates the passage of Genesis 1:27 from today’s readings (reproduced above right). Usually called the “Creation of Adam”, it actually shows something more complex. Yes, God is reaching out to the reclining (and not yet fully alive) Adam to animate him. But look further. As He animates Adam with His right hand, the left arm of God is wrapped around the shoulders of the already created Eve. She for her part grasps His arm and looks with evident interest at the about to be animated Adam.

Detail showing Eve in God's left arm

There is another account in Genesis, also familiar to us, of the creation of Eve from one of Adam’s ribs. Michelangelo also painted that story on the Sistine ceiling. This is the more traditional artistic view of the Creation of Eve but it lacks much of the energy, the grace and the mystery of Michelangelo's first image.

Michelangelo, Creation of Eve

Italian, 1508-1512

Vatican City, Sistine Chapel

Uniquely among the monotheistic religions Christianity permits the use of images of God. Why? The answer lies in the Christian belief in the reality of the Incarnation. Since God has assumed human nature and form the Biblical prohibition against making images of God ceases to apply. As the second Council of Nicea declared in 787 "Following the divinely inspired teaching of our holy Fathers and the tradition of the Catholic Church (for we know that this tradition comes from the Holy Spirit who dwells in her) we rightly define with full certainty and correctness that, like the figure of the precious and life-giving cross, venerable and holy images of our Lord and God and Savior, Jesus Christ, our inviolate Lady, the holy Mother of God, and the venerated angels, all the saints and the just, whether painted or made of mosaic or another suitable material, are to be exhibited in the holy churches of God, on sacred vessels and vestments, walls and panels, in houses and on streets."
(Council of Nicaea II: DS 600)

This decree of Nicea II was promulgated for the entire church, both Greek and Latin speaking, and was a response to the strongly held beliefs of the iconoclasts, who wished to suppress the use of images, which had convulsed the Byzantine Empire and the eastern churches for almost 100 years. In addition, St. John Damascene, last of the Greek Fathers and a staunch defender of images, had written in De imagine ("In Defense of Images") "Of old, God the incorporeal and uncircumscribed was never depicted. Now, however, when God is seen clothed in flesh, and conversing with men, (Bar. 3.38) I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake, and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter." (St. John Damascene, De Imagine, Part I, 15-16, from Internet Medieival Sourcebook.)

The ways in which this imaging of the divine has been accomplished in the course of time is the subject of Christian iconography. To quote from the Merriam-Webster dictionary, iconography is "1: pictorial material relating to or illustrating a subject; 2: the traditional or conventional images or symbols associated with a subject and especially a religious or legendary subject; 3: the imagery or symbolism of a work of art, an artist, or a body of art".

The iconography of any subject develops and changes over time. Christian iconography develops and changes too, as reflection on the Gospels and Tradition develops over time and as the act of making art develops and changes as well. This is the background for this blog.

Ad Imaginem Dei

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Tuesday, February 10, 2009

In the Divine Image He Created Them

Central Park Sunset

Oscar Wild 1997(?)-2014