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3. Art marks
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3.4 Sacred imagery
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Karttikeya Kumara, temple drape. Tamil Nadu, 18th cent AD
Art is image making
and all image-making is rooted in the creation of things that
stand for other things. Works of art are not mirrors but they share with mirrors that
elusive magic of transformation and substitution that is hard to put into words.
This
magic of transformation is particularly difficult to comprehend when we view native
tribal art. We have begun to see that the qualities which the Post-Impressionists
read into African sculpture were after all qualities which sprang from a European cast
of mind. The real difficulty, I believe, lies in the fact that African art, as much as art in
medieval Europe, is the client of religious belief and practice. African sculpture is
talismanic art. That is to say it is concerned with the concept of "force", which
may
be paralleled by the Christian notion of grace. Such a notion means that we can no
longer discuss the native art in purely aesthetic terms, as a matter of exciting
relationships between abstract forms. Instead, we must begin to think in terms of a
whole culture, of a tribe which is driven by instinct and tradition to express its
relationship to nature in a certain way, for a certain kind of ritual purpose.
The making of icons
and symbolic images as talismans is a form of magic. Many
people believe that an image of a person or thing shares some of the qualities of the
original. Many prehistoric, and even modern-day primitive tribes' paintings depict
birds, animals and abundant fertile fields as magical charms, believing that the birds
and animals will be easily hunted and that the fields will yield rich harvests. The idea
behind making images of planets and constellations was to summon the essence of
the original and to attract their favourable influence. This idea was known all over the
world. A 15th century Florentine philosopher and doctor called Marsilio Ficino (1498
A.D.) in his medical book called Libri di Vita (Book of Life) recommended the use of
images of planets to attract their attention and to persuade them to be more
favourable. In India, images, paintings, geometrical yantras, mythological stories
about astral divinities were evolved with the same magical purpose in mind. The
images were, and still are, made of special metals, given specific forms and objects
to hold, all in the hope of pleasing the awesome powers of nature and the celestial
bodies they represent. So it should be remembered that, however beautiful some of
the examples of astrological art may be, their purpose is mainly magico-religious.
They are not works of art created for their own sake, in the modern sense. They are
magical charms and diagrams.
Utimately the purpose
of religious sym-jolism, and therefore of sacred imagery, s to
explore and explain humanity's relationship with its gods. It is often comparatively
easy to assess what ancient societies held sacred, and why. Surviving artefacts,
paintings, sculptures and religious buildings provide insight into the beliefs and fears
of most culture groups. The lives of earlier generations may have been shorter and
more difficult, but they were also simpler: people were concerned about the very
basics of existence and worshipped the forces that governed their survival.
Many sacred symbols
are derived from nature; others are created to remind people
of critical events, ceremonies or people in their religion's history. Some are simply
representations of gods and can be worshipped as such. They appear in many
different forms—as statues, carvings, paintings (on anything from rock to canvas),
engravings, even buildings. All represent an optimistic belief that mankind is not
alone, a humble, almost childlike faith that unknown forces beyond our control are
watching over us.
As civilizations became
more complex, so, too, did their gods. The first evidence of
human ritual or ceremonial belief in an afterlife is evident from Neanderthal graves.
Fifty thousand years ago, a people who scratched out an existence at the mercy of
the elements buried their dead with flowers and artefacts. This suggests that they
were concerned about what happened after death, and perhaps believed in some
sort of supernatural power who would be appeased by their offerings.
The great standing
stones of western Europe, epitomized by Stonehenge, show that
the Bronze Age people of Europe worshipped the sun; several millennia later, the
Greeks had acquired a pantheon of gods whom they consulted about their future and
who protected them in both life and death. This philosophical leap changed the
nature of religious imagery dramatically. Perhaps less concerned than their
ancestors with the forces of nature, and more impressed by rational human
achievements, the Greeks endowed their gods with human forms. Most of their
deities had perfect bodies and beautiful, unblemished faces. In short, they were
divinized humans, not amorphous spirits of an unpredictable Nature.
Carl Jung's anthropological
studies convinced him that for generations, from earliest
recorded history until the present day, the same archetypal symbols have occurred
in the myths and legends of almost every civilization. If Jung was correct, and every
society has drawn from the same universal well of images and archetypal symbols,
why are the images of different cultures dissimilar, and why have they changed so
much over time? The answer appears to lie in the endlessly fertile human
imagination. Every culture must, to some extent, adapt a faith to suit society's needs
and enable adherents to understand the basis of belief. Similarities do occur,
however, as in the earliest sacred images, drawn from nature. All primitive religions
developed among illiterate people wholly dependent upon hunting, gathering and
later, agriculture for survival. Early human beings were awed and baffled by the
forces of nataure, andit is not surpirising that the rain, wind, sun and moon were
deified. Depictions of these gods were firmly rooted in the viible world: powerful
animals lent themselved to sacred images, and they were hybridised into human
forms to emphasise the holistic aspect of human existence.
Given the strictures
of the Bible's second commandment- 'You shall not make
yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that
is in earth beneath, or that is in water under the earth"—it seems surprising that
theJudeo-Christian tradition has produced any artwork at all. However, this prohibition
was, according to Christians, addressed to the creation of iconic objects that could
become the focus of worship, (so-called false gods like the Canaanite Baal or the
Golden Calf).Thus, Christian artists have freely depicted Biblical scenes, while
Jewish tradition interprets the second commandment more widely.
Islam, too, restricted
its artists in representing the Prophet Muhammad, and, in some
sects, prohibited all images of the human form. Muslim figurative art is evocative and
ornamental, not representational.
Sacred images have
also been important to secular societies, acting as powerful
binding forces that have united people in times of trouble. Opportunist rulers have
adopted and misused them to further their own ends. In the late eleventh century, for
example, the powerful Norman knight Bohemond de Taranto had acquired all the
land he could in southern Italy and was seeking a new theatre of operation. The
preaching of the First Crusade in 1096 must have seemed like a gift from God: at
once, he equipped his army with white tabards bearing a red cross and transformed
his marauders into God's soldiers, whose brutal actions were now sanctioned by the
Almighty. "Taking the Cross" became medieval shorthand for joining a crusade, and
Bohemond's troops led the way by capturing the great city of Antioch, which would
become the strongest of the Crusader states.
A far more complex
question is what we hold sacred today, on the brink of the twenty-
first century and a new millennium. In religious terms, the sacred symbols of the
great faiths have barely changed, yet we live in an increasingly secular age, and,
certainly in the West, fewer and fewer people find solace in conventional religion. We
are bombarded with more information in a day than our ancestors dealt with in a
year—from newspapers, radios, televisions, computers and the other paraphernalia
of modern life. We have more control over our everyday lives than our ancestors did,
but are still at the mercy of the elements and the whims of the gods or fate. Despite
the amazing medical advances made in this century, the phrase "In the midst of life
we are in death" remains as true today as it did when the New Testament was
written. Trains crash, storms destroy livelihoods, global warming alters weather
systems, random acts of violence occur everywhere, and individuals have no power
to stop them. For all these reasons, sacred images retain their power, whether as
talismans, spiritual roots or the common focus of belief that orders the universe in
ways beyond our limited comprehension.
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Panel from a Maori house opened in 1872. It represents the ancestor for whom the
house is
named and the symbols connect the family to the ancient East Polynesian islands from which
they were forced to leave.
Native art art in its
classic forms evolved over centuries of endeavor and craft
experimentation. Some of its designs, motifs, and patterns have their roots in the
distant homelands. Over millennia. forebears had expressed religious and artistic
ideas in wood, stone, bone, ivory, and other materials found in the prevailing
environment. Tools were made of natural materials that could cut, such as stone,
bone, shell, obsidian, and shark teeth.
A characteristic of
all native art workmanship, including that of the, was the
preference for making an object from a single piece of material – such as a block of
wood – rather than joining one piece to another. However, architectural structures
and large canoes were made of parts lashed together with fibre cordage. But even
these things were composed of single, large pieces of artwork tied together. Each
part was, technically speaking, made separately as an object in and of itself. In this
sense each part of a canoe or house was an artistic object in its own right but joined
to form the large structures. Communal effort, with parts carved by different
craftsmen, was typical.
All objects were made
to serve a practical or symbolic function. They served a need
in the everyday world of work – fish hooks, adzes, digging sticks – or as religious
ritual items considered necessary to achieve some satisfactory result. Godsticks
and crop gods are examples of this latter principle, and are classed as talismans,
and their function was to keep alive the connections between the material and non-
material worlds.
Utilitarian artefacts
often had ritual versions for ceremonial use. Examples of this
were the elaborated digging sticks and fish hooks. Features added to objects of
practical use, such as small figures or heads added to weapons, seem to be related
to magic in aiding the power (mana) of the object and so improving its efficiency.
All man-made things
had a spirit life and were not regarded by the as inanimate
'dead' objects, as we now regard a bowl or spade. The importance of magic, such
as might be effected by a post or panel representing an ancestor, did not interfere
with the strength or practical utility of the carving. Ancestral figures were adapted to
posts, panels, and other things in a manner that retained artistic design, without
detracting from the primary utility of the object concerned.
Native craftwork had
a marvelous integration of function and form. Ingenuity in
adapting motifs to the objects made can be seen in almost every decorated artefact.
The rule was utility first, decoration second. When we use the word 'decoration',
however, we must always bear in mind that carved symbols usually had magical
functions. Ornateness no doubt pleased the eye of the just as it pleases us today,
yet to the makers and users, the objects and symbols were more than things of art.
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Predynastic bull's head ivory amulets from grave at Naquada
Since the discovery
of the Predynastic cultures of Egypt at the end of the nineteenth
century interpretations of the religious beliefs and practices of the period have been
numerous and speculative. Inference has to be based on the funerary customs,
depictions found on the objects and some of the objects themselves, such as
figurines. In the absence of a developed writing system these chance finds are open
to different interpretations, often influenced by the fashions of modern times or the
sex of the scholar! For instance, one or two past lady scholars championed the
existence of the great 'mother' goddess to whom all other male gods were
subordinate. Male scholarly predilections were for the interpretation of the motifs
solely from the historic point of view, which involved extrapolating the known
symbolism from Dynastic times back into the Predynastic. Now social
anthropological models have entered the argument with emphasis on the
dependence on agriculture and the development of a stratified society.
The true picture of
religious belief in the Predynastic period may include quite a few
of the suggestions which have been made, but there are one or two basic certainties.
It is known from later religious and funerary practices that the Egyptians believed in
an afterlife and made provision for it in their burials. The practice of elaborate burial of
the dead with grave goods indicates that this belief goes back to the Predynastic and
continued to develop. It is also known that the Egyptians took various precautions to
safeguard the souls of their deceased through prophylactic amulets, spells and
rituals, a custom also known in other ancient and modern societies. Amulets
certainly existed in the Predynastic, and there are rare depictions of ceremonies. In
later times there was a large pantheon of gods and goddesses, many of which were
linked to, or personified by, animals. From the earliest times the Egyptians observed
a predetermined pattern in the natural world which implied superhuman powers and
a basic order which gave their religion a long tradition of conservatism. The
depictions of various animals in the Predynastic can therefore sometimes be
interpreted as representations of deities as well as prophylactic devices to ward off
evil or ensure good hunting. Some figures were no doubt connected with ensuring
fecundity, given a probable high infant mortality rate and the need to encourage the
continued gift of the Nile's fertility. Pharaoh was also a god to his people and the
development of a graded society with one ruler is echoed by the evolution of artistic
subjects into the Protodynastic and Early Dynastic periods when the Upper Egyptian
king, or his manifestation the bull, was often shown in a position of prominence
undertaking important ceremonial duties.
The fact that it was
most usual, but by no means consistent, to place the body in the
grave with the head pointing towards the south and the face to the west has led to
the notion that the Egyptians had already identified the locality of the 'land of the
dead'. The foetal position for eternal rest is standard and quite often there might be
more than one occupant in a grave, perhaps a man and a woman, two individuals of
the same sex, an adult and a child, or a group of children. Their rest was sometimes
disturbed by what may have been ritual dismemberment before interment. Many of
the reported cases of dismemberment were probably caused by the actions of
robbers or scavengers, but there remain some instances where the practice may
have taken place. This might indicate some form of ancestor worship, particularly in
cases when the head was removed and either deliberately placed somewhere else
in the grave or replaced with something else. It may also simply be that relatives
replaced a revered head when a robber had torn it off to get at a necklace, which
seems to be the explanation for some later instances of dismemberment. The
emplacement of grave goods was logical: small pots, cosmetic containers, amulets
and palettes near the head and larger pots at either end of the grave. Some of the
large storage jars in Gerzean graves were found to contain ashes with a thick
vegetable paste on the top, as if some funerary feast and pouring of libation had
taken place at the graveside before burial. The wavy-handled pottery jars often
contain what was originally aromatic fat, the precursor to the seven sacred oils of the
Old Kingdom, but sometimes have only good Nile mud as a substitute.
The design elements
on white cross-lined (C class) Naqada I pottery are restricted to
geometric devices, hills, plants, domestic and desert animals, hippopotami and
crocodiles. More rarely there are depictions of humans.
The hippopotamus was
certainly respected and perhaps even worshipped. Apart
from the paintings of them around the interior of bowls, amulets of pottery, bone and
ivory in this form were also popular in the Amratian. The front cover of this book
shows a pottery bowl from a woman's grave, the richest in the cemetery at El
Mahasna, with modelled hippopotami around the rim. This grave also contained a
male figurine with a penis sheath, and an ivory figure which has been identified as the
first depiction of the mysterious animal of the god Seth, who, as god of chaotic
forces, was connected with the hippopotamus in later times. From the prolific use of
hippopotamus ivory in Predynastic and Dynastic times, it is certain that the animal
was hunted and perhaps these charming early depictions served as protective
devices against the marauding habits of the animal on the river banks.
A cow godess is known
from a relief of a cow's head with five stars on the horns on
a slate palette from a grave at Gerzeh and from various potmarks, who is likely to be
Bat, the cow-goddess of Upper Egypt.
The repertoire of depictions
on Gerzean pottery is greater and subsequently open to
more interpretations. Certain elements seem to be standard, the Naqada plant,
sycamore trees, ostrich, gazelle, water lines, spirals and hills . The Naqada plant,
which seems to sprout from a small pot, has been identified as an aloe, a sycamore
tree, a rush with shoots and a relative of the date palm. The smaller divided tree is
usually accepted as a sycamore, which was a sacred tree in historical depictions,
from which the goddess Hathor poured libations.
Figures in the round
of animals include the theriomorphic vessels in pottery or stone.
Of these, birds and fish were the most popular, although frogs (figure 19) and other
animals are also known. The fashion for these animal-shaped vessels, chiefly
featuring hippopotami, began in the Badarian and continued into the Amratian. The
painted birds and fish were popular in the Gerzean and it seems that, like the
decorated pottery, they were meant to confer an afterlife which would include an
abundance of Nile fauna. Apart from the birds that may be falcons, they do not seem
to represent divinities. The pottery model boats , which copied papyrus river skiffs,
can be included in the same genre and the symbolism conveyed by the boat in
historic times was the journey through the underworld. Models of animals in pottery
were mostly rougher models of bulls, cows, sheep and pigs, whilst in the rarer, fine
flint sculptures birds, cows, snakes, bulls, sheep and hippopotami were depicted and
such models of domestic animals can be assumed to be appeals to ancestors or
divinities for an increase in the herd, or to be a record of such an event. The bull's
head, or bucranium, which probably represents power and stability, was stylised into
an amulet which looks like a mushroom slice in Naqada II and III. Another animal
which conveyed a sense of guardianship and strength was the lion, and a particular
way of depicting this animal in the round evolved from the late Predynastic. Lion
models began to feature as game pieces in sets with dogs or hares, balls, brick
shapes and rods and this style of game continued into the Early Dynastic period. At
first the lion was carved with a gash mouth and its tail straight down between its
haunches and then it began to grin and its tail curved up over its back in a question-
mark shape during the Protodynastic. This archaic style of lion sculpture persisted
into the middle of the First Dynasty, when it was succeeded by the classic type of
lion which had a closed mouth and its tail curved around its haunch, and the lioness
was even depicted in a jewelled collar as if tame animals were used in the hunt.
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Sarcophagus; late 3rd-early 4th cent AD Rome
The Europe animal sacrifice
ended with the establishment of Christianity; and
nothing could show more vividly the absolute newness of the Christian religion than
the choice of its symbolic animal. After the lions and bulls of Mithras and
Mesopotamia came the lamb and the sheep. Innocent, gentle and docile, they are
either the symbol of sacrifice, or exist to follow the will of the Good Shepherd, and to
enjoy His protection. In the same spirit the dove takes the place of the eagle or
falcon. Although the lamb is alluded to as a symbol of Christian humility in early
Christian texts, it does not appear in art till it can safely be substituted for the
hermetic fish. The sheep are the chief symbolic animals of the evolved Christianity of
the late fifth century, and inhabit the mosaics of Ravenna, beginning with the beautiful
representation of the Good Shepherd in the so-called Mausoleum of Galla Placidia.
Just when Christians
began to use and to create pictorial art is therefore not settled.
There are a number of images which fall on the cusp between the Christians' using
images which they acquired from pagan culture and their creation of images as 'their
own.' The first collection of Christian iconic art is in the emetery of S. Callistus
(Callixtus) from which there are funereal decorations (frescoes) which were painted
approximately at the end of the second century. This development took place at
about the same time as the early Christian apologists were writing. Both were a sign
that a hitherto small, poor and loosely organized group, that is, the Christians, began
to go public. The paintings in the catacomb, including their decorations (borders,
birds, fish, and so on), demonstrate a group who were employing the basic funereal
nature iconography of paganism and beginning to Christianize it. A chief element in
this development was the fact that Christians had begun to arrive at a period in their
growth when they were (1) organized enough to plan for such a project, and (2) had
the economic means to purchase the land and to pay for the excavation and
decoration of the cemetery.
Several of the 'Shepherd
Oil Lamps' can be acceptably dated in the period of
175—225 CE. It is not only on lamps of the late second and early third centuries that
the Good Shepherd appears. In Rome, the shepherds carrying their sheep began to
appear around 260 in relief sculpture . . . commissioned by the new religionists.
Within the literary culture of the new religionists there existed a long-standing
etradition that associated the founder of the movement with shepherding metaphors.
Here we find iconic representations that can be positively identified as produced by a
Christian aesthetic.
The Good Shepherd was
the most popular figurative Jesus image in the very
beginnings of Christian iconic art. It is is the criophorus (literally, the ram-
carrier). The figure is usually of a young man. beautiful and, most often, a
beardless youth; he is dressed for outdoor work, that is. with a short tunic and
boots or high-laced sandals; he stands carrying a sheep across his shoulders. It
is well known that the image of the ram-carrier was originally pagan and was at
least a thousand years old before it was used by the Christians. Hermes, Apollo
and Dionysos were all represented by the ram-carrier.
The metaphor of the
shepherd who cares for his flock is prolific throughout the
early church's literature (and not only in John 10 and Luke 15:3—7). The image
did not carry over to the church only in the traditions it received from ancient
Israel (as in Psalm 23); the shepherd as leader of the flock permeates the
Greek and Roman cultures of the Mediterranean basin from before the times of
the Odyssey. It is not therefore the rarity of the image which gives rise to
considerable and often contentious discussions about early Christians' use of
the iconic bonus pastor, the case is just the opposite. The image is employed
so often and is so permeated with a pagan scent that it seems the Christian use
of these images had to be justified in some way by art historians and
theologians.17
The most common device
in art history's canonization of the Good Shepherd
has been to suggest that it is an 'abbreviated representation,' and the image
therefote points to scriptural passages, namely, Luke 15:3—7 and John 10. The
broader presentation of a sheep carrier with his flock introduces a bucolic
theme, which, in this context, is to be understood as a symbolic reference to
John 10:II.'
The Christian apocrypha
join virtually the whole corpus of early Christian
literature in their employment of references to Jesus as Shepherd. The Acts of
Thomas 39 uses the phrase 'Good Shepherd' (agathos poimen). That the
Shepherd of Hermas uses the image is self-evident in the title given that work; it
is an especially relevant image in the fourth vision. The list of passages
throughout Christian literature is vast, and in the rhetorical images it is not only
Jesus who is the shepherd. God and the apostles are also shepherds of the
flock. In the latter reference, the phrase in the Acts of Paul and Thecla21 is
poignant and touching: Thecla, having been condemned to be burned, 'as a
lamb in the wilderness looks around for the shepherd, so Thecla kept searching
for Paul. And having looked into the crowd she saw the Lord sitting in the
likeness of Paul and said, "As if I were unable to endure, Paul has come to look
after me.'"
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The Lion of St Mark: Venice
The ancient pagan symbols
of the bull, the lion and the eagle make their way back
into Christian iconography by a curiously roundabout route. The first vision of the
Prophet Ezekiel describes an image in terms which are almost incomprehensible,
both visually and philologically, but which mention four faces, those of a lion, an ox,
an eagle and a man. About six hundred years later the author of the Apocalypse, who
was so frequently indebted to Ezekiel, speaks of the four beasts that are before the
Throne of God.
'The first beast was like a lion, and the second beast was like a calf, and the third
beast had
the face of a man, and the fourth was like a flying eagle.'
These ancient symbolic
animals, in a sacred book believed to have been written by
one of the Evangelists, had an overwhelming influence in the early Middle Ages. The
question, like so many in early Christian doctrine, was solved by St Jerome. In his
famous commentary on Ezekiel he lays it down that these animals are the proper
symbols of the four Evangelists, the eagle for St John, the ; lion for St Mark, the bull
for St Luke and the man for St Matthew.
For over seven hundred
years almost the only animals in Christian art were
representations of the Evangelists. They pass from the extreme stylization of the
Echternach Gospels and the Books of Kells to the magnificent realism of the bull on
the facade of Siena Cathedral, and on Donatello's altar of the Santo in Padua to the
lion of St Mark on the Piazzetta, or Donatello's Marzocco in Florence.
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11th cent illustration from Beatus' Commentary on the Apocalypse
A fabulous bird of the East, distguising itself with dirt and making itself insignificant,
surprises
and kills a serpent. The bird is Christ, distguising His divine nature in order to conquer the Devil
Apart from the symbols
of the Evangelists, three other categories of what may be
loosely classed as symbolic animals occupied the attention of the Middle Ages, early
and late. First, there were the monsters who appear frequently in Romanesque
sculpture. They are represented biting and tearing their victims and symbolize with
irresistible power the energy of evil. Then, at the opposite pole, is the series of MSS.
known as bestiaries. The sources of the bestiaries are unknown. The entries often
quote the authority of a writer known as the Physiologus (which may mean no more
than 'the natural historian'), about whom we may conjecture from internal evidence
that he lived in late Antiquity, although probably in Christian times. The bestiary
claimed to give information, and some of it did in fact go back to Pliny. But the greater
part was based on legend and folklore. For example, a drawing in a MS. in the
University Library in Cambridge
shows the eagle flying up to the sun in order to burn
away its old plumage and the film over its eyes, after which it can take a rejuvenating
plunge into the sea. No bestiary is complete without the famous scene of sailors
anchoring on the back of a whale which they had mistaken for an island. Another
example of the fabulous shows the dog seeing the reflection of its cake in the water,
and losing it in his greedy attempt to get two.
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Thomas Bewick's engraving 'The Fox and the Grapes' (1818)
The fables associated
with Aesop grow naturally out of the moralizing element of the
bestiaries; but they were addressed at first to a more popular audience, and
illustrated with drawings and woodcuts much humbler than the decorative and
imaginative illuminations of the earlier MSS.
The concept that man
can learn from the wisdom of animals has a widespread,
almost a humorous appeal, and revives in a new form the sense of kinship; and
fables continued to be popular till the mid nineteenth century. In the work of La
Fontaine they even inspired great literature.
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