Ad Imaginem Dei: Links for the Easter Season

Monday, April 1, 2024

Links for the Easter Season

Anthony van Dyck, The Resurrection
Flemish, c. 1631-1632
Hartford (CT), Wadsworth Athenaeum

The days of Lent and the days of sadness that are the Triduum are past and Easter 2024 has arrived!

Alleluia!

Alleluia!

Alleluia!

I wish you a happy and profoundly inspiring Easter Season.

To guide some of your explorations of the themes of this joyful season I recommend to you the links below. They lead to some of the commentary that I have written over the years regarding the iconography of the Easter Season, which extends from this happy day till Pentecost and Trinity Sunday.

Please feel free to explore the art created to imagine the Resurrection and the days immediately following, all the way through to the feast of the Holy Trinity. I hope that considering these events and the pictures that artists have created to illustrate them over the centuries will help you to feel more connected to the long tradition of Christian art offered to the glory of God and to the living Church of our own time.

Links have constantly been improved over the years. New images, better quality images and new material are constantly being incorporated. If the original publication date suggests the material is now old, it isn't. I am constantly revising and housekeeping.

Please note that over the course of the Easter Season I will be overhauling every one of the essays listed below to swap out old images with few pixels for newer ones with a greater number of pixels, giving you more visible details when you enlarge the images. I will also be adding new images that turn up in the course of my hunt for improved ones (and this happens all the time). Much more material turns up every year! So, check back often to see what's new.

The Resurrection, the Appearances, the Incredulity of Thomas, Emmaus

Title

Link

The Women at the Tomb

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/04/iconography-of-resurrection-women-at.html

Noli Me Tangere

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/04/iconography-of-resurrection-noli-me.html

Jesus, the Gardener

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2017/04/iconography-of-resurrection-she-thought.html

The Incredulity of St. Thomas (Doubting Thomas)

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/05/iconography-of-resurrection-incredulity.html

Emmaus -- The Journey

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/05/iconography-of-resurrection-emmaus.html

Emmaus -- The Recognition

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/05/iconography-of-resurrection-emmaus_07.html

Climbing from the Tomb

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/05/iconography-of-resurrection-climbing.html

Hovering over the Tomb

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/05/iconography-of-resurrection-hovering.html

Bursting from the Tomb

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/05/iconography-of-resurrection-bursting.html

An Awkward
Resurrection Image

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-happy-and-blessed-easter-season-to.html

Good Shepherd Sunday

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/05/good-shepherd-sunday-fourth-sunday-of.html

The Lake of Galilee -- The Disciples Go Fishing

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/05/iconography-of-resurrection-lake-of.html

Commission to Peter -- The Good Shepherd Transfers Responsibility

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/05/iconography-of-resurrection-peters.html

The Commission to the Apostles

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/05/iconography-of-resurrection-commission.html

Christ Appears to His Mother

Christ Presents the Redeemed to His Mother

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/06/iconography-of-resurrection-christ.html

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2017/05/iconography-of-resurrection-christ.html

The Ascension

Striding into the Sky

https://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/06/iconography-of-ascension-part-i-of-iv.html

Lifted in a Mondorla or on a Cloud

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2017/05/iconography-of-ascension-part-ii-of-iv.html

The Disappearing Feet

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2017/05/iconography-of-ascension-part-iii-of-iv.html

The Direct Approach

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2017/05/iconography-of-ascension-part-iv-of-iv.html

Pentecost

Tongues of Fire

https://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2016/05/tongues-of-fire.html

At This Sound, They Gathered In a Crowd

A Dove Descending

The Holy Trinity

Worthy Is The Lamb

Father, Son, Spirit

Iconography of the
Holy Trinity –
Imagining The Unimaginable

The Holy Trinity -- Love Made Visible

The Holy Trinity -- The Throne of Grace

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2016/05/at-this-sound-they-gathered-in-crowd.html

https://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2020/05/a-dove-descending.html

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2016/04/worthy-is-lamb.html

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2008/05/father-son-spirit.html

http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2012/06/iconography-of-holy-trinity-imagining.html

https://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2019/06/god-so-loved-world-that-he-gave-his.html

https://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-holy-trinity-throne-of-grace.html

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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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