Ad Imaginem Dei: July 2015

Sunday, July 26, 2015

2015 Saint Anne Update -- Saint Anne at the Met

Benedikt Dreyer, The Meeting at the Golden Gate
German, ca. 1515-1520
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Since today is the feast day of Saints Anne and Joachim I am perhaps more sensitive to their imagery than usual. So, yesterday afternoon, I couldn't help noticing that, as I walked through the Medieval Sculpture Hall at the main building of the Metropolitan Museum, two different images of St. Anne were on display, fairly close to each other.

The first one to catch my eye was the statue by the German Benedikt Dreyer of the Meeting at the Golden Gate (about which I wrote here).

The second image, and one of my personal favorites, is a version of the Anna selbdritt image (see here), also German, which includes Anne's own mother, Saint Emerentia in the group.

Anonymous, Madonna and Child with Saints Anne and Emerrntia

German (possibly Hildesheim), 1515-1530

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

This unusual version of the Anna selbdritt is usually on display at the Met, however, the Dreyer Meeting at the Golden Gate is not. I don't suppose that the curators in the Medieval Department at the Met were consciously thinking of the feast day of Mary's parents, though perhaps they were, but I was very pleased to find these two images from their iconography on display in such close proximity to each other and to the feast.

Dating from between 1515-1530, these two polychromed wooden statues from the iconography of Saint Anne (details here) demonstrate the popularity of such images on the very eve of the Reformation, which began in 1517. That they managed to survive the iconoclasm of the Reformation period is nothing short of miraculous.

Happy Feast Day of Saint Joachim and Saint Anne!

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

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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Sunday, July 26, 2015

2015 Saint Anne Update -- Saint Anne at the Met

Central Park Sunset

Oscar Wild 1997(?)-2014