Ad Imaginem Dei: Ascension Updates and New Data

Friday, May 5, 2017

Ascension Updates and New Data

Master of Jacques de Luxembourg, Ascension
from a Book of HoursFrench (Paris), 1460-1470
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
MS M1003, fol. 18v

Over the course of the last month, I have revised all of my earlier essays on Holy Week and the Easter season. Most of these were written in the period between 2008 and 2011. In the intervening years there has been a huge increase in the amount of art available through the internet and in the quality of the jpeg documents themselves.

Consequently, I have been able to incorporate many new works of art in my commentary and have replaced many of the previous works that were incorporated in my earlier essays with the better, clearer and more detailed images that have become available in the intervening years. Many museums are making new high-resolution images available for study and for purposes such as this blog. The difference can be astonishing.

Since many additional images have been made available as well, some of my earlier statements needed to be modified to account for the new information. Some of my former essays have had so much new information that I have found it necessary to split some of them into separate sections, often resulting in a series of essays instead of just one. In addition, among the new images now available, I have found additional examples that suggest new distinctions. So, I have added some entirely new essays to the list of Holy Week and Easter essays.

Some of the principal changes are:

A new essay on the image of Jesus as a Gardener (here).
The former essay on the Ascension has been split into a series of three and an entirely new essay on the Direct Ascension has been added, making it a series of four essays.

Jesus Striding into Heaven (here)

Jesus Lifted by a Mandorla or on a Cloud (here)

The Disappearing Feet of Jesus (here)

The Direct Approach (here)

Many more images have been added to all essays.

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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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Friday, May 5, 2017

Ascension Updates and New Data

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Central Park Sunset

Oscar Wild 1997(?)-2014