The influence of the Bible in works of Art has changed dramatically depending upon the time period, place, or culture that it is created in. In the early Christian church, believers used specific signs such as the anchor or the fish to identify themselves as Christians. For example, the cross could be traced in the dirt of the ground by the toe of a believer to identify himself to another believer in the times of Roman persecution.
It has been said that Christianity thrived during the Roman persecution however the art that was made certainly did not. Many of the early Christians did not have the means to support the commissioning of artworks and when they did, they often paid lower quality artists to do the work. These artists attempted to fuse Christian beliefs into the visual forms available to them, often using the Roman god Apollo as a figuration of Christ.
Works of art within worship spaces had both a commemorative function as well as a didactic function. Believers would worship at the burial places of the saints in the Roman catacombs in the belief that this place had significance, a thinning of the barrier between the divine and mortals. In the era of Constantine, churches were often built at the legendary sites in the life of Christ or the saints. The idea was to situate the worship space in places that had come into contact with the divine.
As Christianity became legal and legitimized, the patronage of the church became an important source of income for artists. In northern European countries, artwork was typically portable, drawn on vellum around the words of Scripture and placed within jeweled covers to be venerated. In Italy and the Byzantine Empire, frescoes and sculpture served to show the relationship of Jesus to his followers, typically as the relationship between a shepherd and his flock.
During the medieval era, the church played such an important role in the daily life of the believer. Art was almost exclusively connected to instructional or decorative functions and would not have been thought of as a means for personal expression. One exception might be the fantastic beasts carved into the columns of the cloisters at Moissac that led Bernard of Clairvaux to proclaim his concern over the distractive nature of the carvings. One could easily imagine an overexuberant craftsman endowing the sculptures with a personality that was soon dampened by the master!
In the awakening of the Renaissance, the complete reliance on the words of Scripture and the proclamations of the clergy began to wane. As a sense of humanism began to arise along with the desire to explain the natural world through observation, art became more individualistic and interpretive rather than retaining the images and techniques of the past. While artists such as Masaccio and Leonardo were devout Christians, that did not stop them from combining their faith with contemporary faces and themes in their works. In the Baroque period, the patronage of the Roman Catholic Church produced works by artists such as Caravaggio and Bernini that were full of dramatic tension and lighting. The excitement generated by the work was intended to bring wayward souls back into the waiting arms of the church and appeal to the common person as well as the nobility and clergy.
As the secularization of art continued through the 18th and 19th centuries, artists still used the Bible as source material yet they also looked to art to have a communicative function that was outside the bounds of the church. The success of the images of the Counter-Reformation led artists to use art to bring attention to social ills and elevate political heroes.
Contemporary artists still use the Bible for source material but in many cases it is only for the purposes of the artist. In the video piece, The Crossing, Bill Viola uses imagery that can be interpreted as having Biblical symbolism but can also be used to refer to belief systems from other world religions. Other contemporary artists at the forefront of the art world rarely use religious imagery in order to being taken seriously and allow the work to exist on its formal properties without relying on a narrative. Since the Renaissance, artists have become increasingly secular in their outlook.
In the Postmodern era, art has continued to focus upon the inner self for truth rather than a God that transcends time and culture. As contemporary artists look to the past for inspiration, they are forced to confront art that was deeply focused on Biblical stories and artists who not only used the Bible for inspiration but were transformed by the message within. That message, whether couched in terms of spirituality or religion, is still able to awake the deeply held desire for humans to know and become one with their Creator.
Kurt Bergdolt is an Assistant Professor of Art and has been teaching classes in Art Appreciation, Art in the Christian Church, and Ceramics at Concordia University-Portland since 2009.
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