Bible Stories

We have no idea what Jesus looked like. There are no physical descriptions of him at all in the Gospels. Yet the person of Jesus and events of his life have been one of the greatest subjects of art throughout the centuries. He has inspired artists of many different cultures, even of many different faiths. We often learn more about the artist and his cultural setting than we do about Jesus.

Attitudes to art have of course changed dramatically down the centuries. The glowing mosaics, richness and gold of Byzantine figures of Jesus expressed his glory, his Godhead: they were not intended to be ‘realistic’. In medieval times too, as in the Eastern orthodox icons in all ages, the subject-matter was two-dimensional and symbolic.

They also reflected an increasing emphasis on Jesus as remote, untouchable, Jesus as God not man, somebody unreal, to be worshipped from afar with wonder and reverence. He was not thought of as someone whom the ordinary Christian could approach as the way to God, through forgiveness and love. Increasingly the Virgin Mary became the mediator and intercessor: people could identify with her as ‘one of them’, as mother-figure. Much medieval art had the ‘religious’ purpose of providing aids for the devotion of the faithful. Pictures and statues in the church were visual aids, as in many Catholic churches today, a focus for teaching as well as worship.

The Renaissance discovered the values and styles of classical antiquity and also a new fascination with shape, form and perspective. Figures became rounded, life-like, though still symbolic, set in a landscape evoking a golden age. Jesus was an idealized man, in keeping with the ideals of humanism. At the same time medieval piety developed into a more realistic portrayal of the suffering Jesus—very much a man, but appealing to religious emotion.

So each age, each culture, mirrored its own faith. The Reformation was at first populist, propagandist, using woodcuts in their pamphlets and books which were given a wide circulation by the new technology of printing. But later it reflected the newly discovered biblical faith: nature as created by God, something to wonder at and explore: Jesus in the setting of family life and in real situations as a ‘real’ person. Artists struggled with how to show him as God as well as man, his ‘otherness’ as well as his humanity.

The interiors and landscapes were of Holland, not first- century Palestine. The painters communicated to their own time by reflecting it: their concern was to express the truth about Jesus, not his historical setting. Or, in the classical and baroque art of the Catholic Reformation, Christ was set in an idealized world, a glorious golden age, forming a theatrical backdrop to the drama and mystery of the church’s worship.

So too, later, more formal or romantic views of Jesus were expressed using formal or romantic settings. A dead orthodoxy, whether Protestant or Catholic, produced pictures which communicate not life but the desire to impress or please the sponsor, expressing a humanist or classical world- view or a romantic escape from reality.

What the re-discovery of the Bible had put together, the age of reason and romanticism took apart once again. The artist was no longer simply a craftsman, serving the community. He was a visionary who could see beyond the perceptions of ordinary people. His creativity must be allowed full rein; imagination is more important than ‘fact’. Jesus could be recreated, not only in the image of the age, the culture, but of the artist, however remote from biblical fact.

Today we have entered into this legacy. Jesus can be made to stand for whatever image of him the artist wants. Truth is not important: self-expression, the existential awareness of the individual, is what matters. It is more crucial than ever that we return to what is true: true to a world which is both glorious and fallen, true to Jesus who lived at an actual time and place but who is also God, alive and present in every age.

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