THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN PAINTING
By John S. Dixon
Art Books Publishing Ltd. 192 pages.
One b/w and 254 colour illustrations; £29.99
ISBN 978 1 908 970 343
The Christian Year in Painting is a beautifully produced art book with 254 colour illustrations and an insightful commentary.
The book offers a rare combination of devotional faith and academic rigour. One can enjoy this book at many levels, ranging from a coffee-table browse, enjoying well-loved Old Master paintings for a few minutes, or a more serious read that includes narrative explanation, theological interpretation, visual analysis and historical context. It is divided into 33 short essays, each of which focuses on a painting chosen by the author for its visual and narrative content.
From its early beginnings, the church established rhythms throughout the year for remembering and celebrating the story of salvation, which became established as the liturgical calendar. Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox denominations add or extract different elements according to their theological beliefs, but the five main liturgical seasons shared by all Christian traditions make up the five sections of this book: Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week & Eastertide, and so-called liturgical ‘Ordinary Time’.
Close observations
The book is full of interesting close observations: my own favourite is the discussion of William Dyce’s Man of Sorrows, c.1860 (National Gallery of Scotland) to mark the beginning of Lent and the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness (see illustration).
Jesus is seated in a wild Scottish landscape, full of rocky boulders that call to mind the devil’s taunt, urging him to turn stones into bread. The unusual placement of Jesus at the far left of the composition seems to visualise the idea that he is resisting worldly glory at the centre stage. Dyce sets the narrative within his own familiar Scottish surroundings in order to relate the gospel story more closely to his own experience.
Dixon’s discussion of the painting draws out the fascinating historical context to which Dyce was responding, amidst the religious turmoil of mid-19th-century Britain. The painting moves away from traditional medieval representations of scary devils and instead depicts a very internal struggle of temptation. But there is also a wider symbolic narrative. At the centre of the painting is a small stream, which speaks of Jesus as the living water, and also reminds us of the Holy Spirit, who gives inner strength to face times of spiritual struggle (pp.68-73).
Other passages I particularly enjoyed in the book were the discussion of Bellini’s Madonna of the Meadow, where the Christ Child lies sleeping in the Madonna’s lap, anticipating – in compositional terms – paintings of the Lamentation, where the dead body of Jesus lies in his mother’s lap (pp.46-51); the description of the three very human angels in Piero della Francesca’s Baptism of Christ (pp.59-60); the discussion of Tintoretto’s Christ washing his Disciples Feet, c.1575-80, where Dixon draws out the shadowy tension in the detail of Judas entering the meal late through a doorway at the upper left; and Christ before the High Priest, by Gerrit van Honthorst, c.1617, which is lit by a single candle at the centre of the composition and has a wonderful drama of gestures and intense gazes (pp.106-109).
Catholic emphasis
The author, John S. Dixon, is both an art historian and has been, over many years, the art correspondent for the Catholic Times. While seeking to be outward looking to all Christian traditions, the book has an undoubted Catholic emphasis, including Diego Velázquez’s Immaculate Conception, Francesco Botticini’s Assumption of the Virgin and Ambrogio Bergognone’s Our Lady of the Rosary. The author’s own confessional position is stated in the Introduction, and also becomes apparent in some theological comments such as those on regenerative baptism on p.60.
While I enjoyed the book greatly, and admire its undoubted scholarly credentials, its title led me to expect a more digestible read with a greater sense of how my diary and the church year fit together. I found the essays were a bit long and I wanted to skim at times. But without subheadings, it was difficult to navigate between the more devotional, contextual and art historical elements in each essay.
The large number of comparative illustrations in each essay makes for a beautiful book, but they were generally not discussed. Quite inexplicably, the title captions for all the main paintings do not include their locations, which is frustrating for further research. Indeed, this information is apparently not included in the book at all. Most seem to come from the National Gallery in London, but not exclusively.
Disappointment
My chief disappointment about the book, however, is its overwhelming emphasis on Italian Medieval and Renaissance art, together with a few Northern European pictures, c.1450-1650. The William Dyce painting and a Crucifixion by Eugene Delacroix are the only 19th-century works cited, let alone anything more modern than that.
In this regard it is a book that resolutely reinforces the idea of an art historical ‘canon’ (paintings accepted as ‘great art’ by experts with a supposed right to define taste). It also somehow presents a message that Christian faith belongs with art of the past. Yet artists in the 20th and 21st centuries worldwide engage profoundly with Christian truth in their art.
Many churches continue to commission new works of art that are viewed in contexts where the Christian Year is actually practiced by Christian believers. By including some modern, and even non-European works, the book would have offered a more forward-looking approach, suggesting that the incredible heritage of European Medieval and Renaissance religious art belongs together with living traditions of Christian faith and art in our contemporary world.
