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The main problem of this article is that it uses modern cultural and artistic norms to interpret ancient art. Traditional Catholic and Christian iconography wa
by iammisc 5y ago
The main problem of this article is that it uses modern cultural and artistic norms to interpret ancient art.
Traditional Catholic and Christian iconography was not meant to be accurate, but rather to symbolize meaning.
For example, in my church, the priest recently pointed out there is a dog in every single stained glass window depicting scenes of Jesus's life. In particular, the dog is a dalmation.
If we were to apply this same line of reasoning in the article to these windows, we'd be forced to make ridiculous conclusions that Catholics of 20th century Portland believed Dalmations were holy holy dogs alive at the time of Christ.
In reality, the dalmation is a symbol of St Dominic (it's a dominican church), whose mother had a dream she gave birth to a dalmation (St Dominic) with a torch in his mouth who lit the world on fire. The symbology is obvious, since Dominic, founder of the Order of Preachers, did indeed spread the gospel message throughout large portions of the world at the time. The dalmation symbolizes St Dominic's following of Jesus's example. At no point is any of the art intended to be realistic.
So if that's true of 20th century Catholic art, made by people alive at a time when art is expected to portray reality, then even more so should we not interpret this fresco as realistic, since it was made at a time when people couldn't even paint realistically (perspective was an enlightenment / renaissance invention IIRC).
- pmoriarty 5y ago"At no point is any of the art intended to be realistic." Well, except that, say, Jesus is supposed to be Jesus. Adam and Eve are supposed to be Adam and Eve. The garden in which Adam and Eve are depicted is supposed to be the Garden of Eden in the Bible. In the various depictions of the Last Supper, Jesus is depicted as having supper with his disciples, and that is supposed to depict exactly that. Jesus is shown as breaking bread in those paintings, just as he does in the Biblical story, etc, etc, etc... Not to say there isn't a lot of symbolism in Christian art, but it's not all symbolic.
- iammisc 5y agoI suppose it's realistic in the sense that Christ is depicted as a human as are adam and eve, instead of something else, but there is no presumption that christ actually looked like the way he was drawn.
- frutiger 5y agoBut by that logic the person seeing your church centuries later could assume there _was_ a dog there, it just wasn’t necessarily a Dalmatian?
- whatshisface 5y agoFortunately for believers, the interpretation of frescos forms the theological foundation of no major religion.
- iammisc 5y agoExcept if they were familiar with christian mythology they would not. You cannot view the image and then ascertain the mythology without reference to both written documents and traditional culture. You have to first study the documents and the existing culture and only then interpret the image. I am accusing the author of not having sufficiently studied the cultures traditions or it's written words.
- stewbrew 5y agoDo you actually think people believe Jesus to look like an Italian movie star.
- watwut 5y ago"Realistic art" does not mean "represents something". You can represent things and not be realistic, majority of drawings made by humans are in this category. Neither adam nor eve could plausibly look like this: https://assets.atlasobscura.com/media/W1siZiIsInVwbG9hZHMvYXNzZXRzLzM5MTQyNmNhZWI5YmRhY2ZiMF9SREQ2TkIuanBnIl0sWyJwIiwiY29udmVydCIsIiJdLFsicCIsImNvbnZlcnQiLCItcXVhbGl0eSA4MSAtYXV0by1vcmllbnQiXSxbInAiLCJ0aHVtYiIsIjEyODB4PiJdXQ/RDD6NB.jpg https://assets.atlasobscura.com/media/W1siZiIsInVwbG9hZHMvYX... - altrough proportions are roughly right.
- some_hacker33 5y agoWhy are you still giving money to the catholic church?