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The Human Body’s Representation in the Christian Middle Ages.

Pretext for a Reinterpretation of the Artist’s Attitude Regarding the Two-dimensional Space

 

 

 

Maria-Barbara Bartos,

Romanian Institute of Humanist

Culture and Research, Venice

 

 

 

The Medieval world was born Christian. This fact would determine that the whole field of the plastic image to gravitate around a profoundly religious spirit. The reality’s representation form would follow the faith, indifferent to the shapes taken.

Thus, the purpose of the art in the Middle Ages and especially in Byzantium was to validate the doctrine of the incarnation, to display the divinity’s light and colours in shapes understandable for the human mind. In Byzantium and generally in the Christian Middle Ages, the art was theology, a conception that from the doctrine viewpoint had been reflected in the 5th century mystic Dennis the Areopagite ‘s words: “The essentials and the orders that stay above us are not corporal […]. On the other side, the human hierarchy is complete of multiple visible symbols that help us to rise towards our hierarchy and our power to unite with the God.” Therefore, the religious images were the equilibrium point between Heaven and Earth, merging the material world and the spiritual one[1].

“While the modern perspective reserves to the ‘artist’, as the creator of the ‘work of art’, a bigger importance than the ‘work of art’ itself, the pre-Renaissance Christian art generally verified the contrary. Since there was only one Creator, the artist was just an anonymous instrument of the God’s work. The Christian art’s purpose was to direct the human thoughts and aspirations towards the heaven; the material ‘object’ was nothing more than a vehicle to facilitate this purpose. In other words, the Christian art was essentially a symbolic art.”[2]

In this context only, one may understand the problem of the human representation inside of the Medieval-Byzantine art.

“The great age of the Christian symbolism was the Middle Ages. […]. In that epoch, the religion was a relatively united and unifying force that directed the human being towards the contemplation of the God’s mysteries, of Jesus’ s incarnation, of his divine and human nature. The creation was understood as an

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expression of the invisible divinity, while the human being attempted to understand the divine reality’s invisible world through the visible reality of the surrounding material world. It seemed that he / she assimilated Jesus’ s words: ‘That there is nothing hidden that would not be discovered and nothing concealed that would not be known’“ (Matthew, 10:26). For the medieval human being, this world was a symbol. It was a human mission, as a part of this symbol, to explore and to express the beyond mysteries.”[3]

The image was external for the medieval thought; it was the body that had to dress the Word-spirit. The entire Christian thought advanced between those two poles of the material, respectively the spiritual, of the external, respectively the internal, of the Earth, respectively the Heaven. The image became a symbolic necessity, having the capacity to facilitate the passing beyond the immediate reality. “The symbol has the incomparable privilege to do not oppose the self opacity to the significant’ s perception; it is just a sign, a transparency, a window open to the mystery.”[4] The human body had no more the intention to copy the reality, but to symbolise through the image. Thus, it did not intend to impress through the presence, while the solution to make it to exist inside of the image was to represent the essential in a simple shape.

The human aspect had no sense inside of the medieval image, whether it did not imply a message, whether it did not signify. Strictly regarding the human body, the symbolic value of its elements was especially materialised by the gestures.

The Medieval civilisation has been called ‘the gesture’s civilisation’, especially because the gesture represented the basis of the Medieval conception of the world. The gesture revealed its part of mediation between the human beings and between the worlds. It had the value of a living symbol. “A symbol is a meeting point that accomplishes a potential reconciliation between two opposite principles: for instance, between material and transcendental, between consciousness and unconsciousness. […]. In other words, from the symbolical viewpoint, the transcendent reality is expressed by the material reality. Therefore, it is the vehicle that permits, at least to a certain point, to make the experience (consciously or unconsciously) of this transcendent reality’s presence. This is the reason why it must not be surprising to discover that some of the most powerful symbolic shapes are often the ones connected to the daily life’s experience and that many symbols are common to many religious, or they are shared by cultural or artistic traditions that from other viewpoints look obviously independent one of each other.”[5]

The important part taken by the gesture was in direct correlation with the place occupied in the Medieval Christianity by the body. Talking about the

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gestures first means to talk about the body. For the Christians, the body is a necessary evil. The body’s rite should be understood from such a perspective.

“The Medieval anthropology’s key-principle is that the human is defined as the union between a body and a soul, and this union is the anthropomorphic principle of a general conception of the social order and of the world, all founded upon the dialectic between internal and external. Inside of the human body and of the society’s performance, the gestures materialise this dialectic. They externally reveal the secret soul’s motions. Disciplined, they could contribute to the soul’s rising towards the divinity.”[6]

We especially approached upon these gestures, which have the capacity to mediate an ascending trajectory of the spirit. The finding again of some particular gestures inside of the Christian imagery determined us to rise the gestures’ problems from a particular perspective.

Among the infinity of gestures that characterised the daily life, it is obvious that only ones became to be represented and implicit to belong to the Christian iconography - namely the essential gestures, meaning the gestures that were capable to transcend the reality, revealing the spirit through the shape.

“By their nature, the gestures belong to the ephemeral, but the gestures which became to be represented surpassed this obstacle. Contrary to the text, the image could not confine itself to evoke without to display. […]. But still, how could the artists in an epoch when all the images were fixed, to represent the gestures, which are first and foremost motion?”[7]

It is essential the problem of the Medieval artist’s attitude in the moment when he / she represented. As we already pointed out, the profoundly religious spirit that represented the essence of the entire pre-Renaissance art also generated the artist’s attitude in front of the work.

“It may be mentioned that what had represented a symbol for the Medieval human being became almost a sign for the Modern one, while where there existed a symbolical interpretation there is now an ad literam understanding. This thing is not surprising, whether we take into consideration the essential feature of the changing that took place in the world beginning with that age. The Modern human being ‘belongs to the world’ and consequently his / her interpretation is rather ad literam than symbolical. What we could describe as excess of preoccupation for the material or external respects of the life led the human being to the loss of the contact with his most elevated internal potentialities. As a consequence of this changing, the world’s material reality became a veil in front of the symbolical reality, and not its mirror.”[8]

The contemporary world needs a refreshment of the values, and this could be made by a reconsideration of the attitudes that we have in front of the reality’s

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different respects. This is also available when we have in mind the attitude in front of the work of art. It could not be understood the medieval images’ purity and force whether it is excluded the profoundly religious spirit that surrounded the artist in the Middle Ages.

Whether we could affirm that “the Universe is the homogeneous Great Reality like the human body”[9], then every visible structure could be ‘read’ as a Universe’s gesture. There are no frontiers between the human being and the world that surrounds it, there are only we to be accustomed to perceive them separately. “The creation is a huge organism whose all elements participate to the same vital mysteries. Actually, there are not the things and the beings by themselves to form the foundation of the real, but the mysteries that act inside of them.”[10] Watching the image of the world’s gestures, we may notice that every material structure is a hard-hearted shape of an affirmation. There is a thought beyond every image…

A gesture is a complex of internal and external factors, materialised in an act.

It may sound strange to intend to represent the motion in a static image. Nevertheless, exactly by this process there turned over that only the gesture that demonstrated to have significance to be represented, in the religious context. “For the Christian culture of the Middle Ages, the mobility belongs to the passer-by, to terrestrial, to history. It characterises the human being by the flesh, the sin’s temptation, and the vice’s excitement; it is in contrast with the motion’s complete absence; these are the signs of the eternity and of the God Himself. Between mobility and its contraries, there exists thus not only an opposition, but also a hierarchy that organises the faiths and the ideology contributing thus to the modelling of the judgements that are made upon the gestures. The suspended gestures, the immobility of the divine or royal majesty are sign of perfection and of sovereignty. In comparison with them, all the other gestures seem to be the result of the excitement. […]. In many medieval rituals, the immobility, and the slow and solemn gait are attributes of specific images of the sovereignty. Generally, the Middle Ages put into value what inside the gestures is rather connected to the position than to the motion. Fixed by its nature, the medieval image could only assist and also strengthen the ideological primacy of the immobility. A gesture like the blessing one, that by definition is exclusively motion, makes room in the miniatures to what is today named in the movies as a ‘frame’.”[11]

These drawings should be regarded in the same manner. As temporal and spatial fragments, the essential moments from the Human life concentrate in an amount of gestures that become signs, or prints of an event. At the same time, a ‘frame’ also supposes the detail, and thus the images that become to be represented are nothing more than fragments… The message is not read in the whole, but in a

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small detail. In those fragments belonging to some ancient images it may also be ‘read’ another respect, that is the ephemeral gesture. “By their nature, the gestures (like the words) belong to the ephemeral. Generally, they do not leave traces directly detectable… With somehow an exception: the print of a letter written by hand that permits the reconstruction of the writer’s gesture; the trace of the sculptor’s chisel, or of the painter’s brush.”[12]

In the middle of the distance between material and immaterial, the drawing seems to be the most appropriate plastic technique to represent a gesture. This ephemeral feature leaves anyhow a trace… In reality, is not a drawing also the trace of a gesture?

The only shape that allows the motion to become matter is the one to not leave any trace. In a running world, in a civilisation of the motion, to suspend a gesture temporally and spatially seems to be a strange preoccupation. Nevertheless, maybe exactly this world for which “the time has no patience any more” should be focalised, in order to follow the nowadays excitement. Regarding a drawing, the onlooker is invited to synchronise his / her step with the symbols’ time. To draw a gesture is a manner to momentarily suspend the passing.

We opted for the drawing in China ink in order to ‘take the prints’ of the essential gestures. Technically speaking, we utilised the wadding technique, which supposes that the proper drawing was elaborated on another material, from where the image was retaken on a sheet of paper. Instead of conserving the drawing, we preserved its trace… The prints are not only traces; they are the materialisation of a passing, they are the visible shape of a particular moment.

Although it is stopped in a fixed image, the gesture structures a space. The entire process may be synthesised through the passage from the three-dimensionality to the two-dimensionality, from the motion to the static. To slow a motion, to stop a gesture is a process that gives to a motion the opportunity to be more than an appearance. Thus, every drawing becomes a silent witness of a passing, one of the moment’s possibilities of being. The gesture continues to be done, it did not stop in the drawing, but it left a trace. This trace becomes sign.

Becoming a controlled motion of the body, the gestures also accomplish a function: the one to produce a sign. Thus, they become a more or less codified signs. Moreover, this kind of gesture would strengthen its significant force when from ‘making sign’ it becomes sign, that is image.

This spontaneous appearance, that is the gesture’s trace, cannot be integrated in a strictly delimited space. We suggested the fact that every drawing is only a motion’s moment also by his apparently accidental presence in the image’s field. There are no limitations, there are no guiding marks; the white of the paper always remains the space of all the possibilities.

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Every gesture structures a space. As we pointed out, the seeming rigidity of the human image in the medieval art is not a sign of the artist’s incapacity to represent the reality as far as devotedly. On the contrary, this perspective of the human is an indication that the image symbolised an idea, more than it represented a shape.

Preserving our preoccupations inside of the general medieval imagery, a number of our works present different topic and technique. The plastic motif of these drawings commences from the crucifying image, a perfect example for a real attitude that became symbol and sign. Although the onlooker is in front of a fragment, he / she mentally reconstructs the entire image, while this image does not lose its significance. This proves one more time the detail’s value in the image’s perception, demonstrating that it could structure a space.

First and foremost, the light from these works is more than an intrinsic condition of the image’s idea; it properly constructs the image, because of the transparency of the utilised material. These drawings are developed on a plastic support that allows the transparency of the drawing’s line. The overlapping of two or more drawings into the light attains the final image. Thus, there is an infinity of possible permutations, the apparently accidental associations suggesting exactly the ephemeral of the representing material, above presented. The final image would thus be the third drawing, the most complex one and also constructed by the occurrence of the intersection between the two overlapped drawings. The game, the hazard and the ephemeral from this works sustain one more time the idea of passing and of unstable, the idea that a drawing is the trace left by a gesture.

Utilising the same permutation principle, the engravings propose another perspective regarding the problem of the infinite possibilities for a moment printed through the drawing to be. This time, the colour is the one to enrich plastically and semantically the chosen topic. In the engravings, the human is formed following the medieval typology, not by description, but by suggestion. Therefore, the shapes are not copies after the visible shapes, and they become to be almost unrecognisable, almost abstract. The ‘Adam and Eve’ motif is a perfect source for the studying of the perspective utilised to represent the human body in the Middle Ages’ art. At the same time, it represents the essential gesture of the humanity’s history.

There is in the engravings a fragmentation of the body, meaning that this is decomposed in order to recompose itself in other guiding marks. Like in the drawings, every print permits an always new and unexpected shape of being for the body, which exists exclusively in the above world. In the abstract plan of the sheet of paper the two bodies meet again each other, constructing for a moment an ideal form… “[…] Because at the Resurrection, they will not be married, but they will be like the angels of God in Heaven.” (Matthew, 22:30). The images of this meeting still belong to the human being.

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In the Medieval art, the figures populated a specific space. The Medieval art demonstrated an explicitly lack of interest for the three-dimensional space, as we understand it nowadays. This was due to the conception that we above demonstrated, meaning that the divinity was not worshiped in the image, but through the image. Utilising the image exclusively as a tool to facilitate the mediation between the worlds, it did not need to know the geometrical perspective in order to suggest the visible reality.

This is the point where it is necessary to somehow clarify the term of reality, in the context that the reality was represented by the pre-Renaissance art, in comparison with the concept of reality after the discovering of the geometrical perspective.

The image did not represent the visible reality in the medieval art, meaning the reality that was subdued to the geometrical or chromatic perspective’s effects, but it represented an invisible reality. It is thus explained why the Medieval image did not attempt to imitate what is seen, because it needed the visible elements exclusively in the case that those surpassed the material-visible condition, receiving sense and power to establish the connection with the world of principles. “The empire of God on the Earth, a pale reflex of the empire of God in Heaven.” This was the phrase that the entire perspective about the world and certainly about the image’s part in the Middle Ages was based upon.

Implicitly, the image’s space was unavoidable two-dimensional in this context (also in the case of the sculpture, that apparent rigidity seems to refuse the volume connected to the material form).

We could say that the two-dimensionality was an intrinsic condition of the pre-Renaissance art. Moreover, it was almost a desired feature, taking into consideration that inside of a two-dimensional space the represented shapes implicitly suggested also a world that did not attempt to look like the apparent reality, but intended to suggest this reality’s principle. This principle did not belong to this world and thus it did not imitate it, but on the contrary, the one to imitate was the world of the visible appearances, the human world…

This image’s duality has actually been a general feature of the religious thought. Inside of the cultures where the image as mediator between the worlds has been accepted, this has not intended to copy the visible world, considered as pure appearance (Maya), but it has symbolised principles, leading to geometrical abstractions closed to the uninitiated minds.

The Medieval image’s space was not a real space and it neither attempted to be; it was exactly the passing space, the symbols’ space, the space of those shapes that existed exclusively to make the material reality understandable. It was a human mind’s creation in order to explain that that had neither time, nor space.

Whether it is supposed that the space could offer an infinity of dimensions, we being limited to perceive only three co-ordinated, then the perfect shape of the space would in extremis be the one where µ is identical with 1. From this

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moment on, we could assert that the two-dimensional space is not a backward step, but a forward one. “The life’s sense, importance, and value are expressed by the mystery behind them, by an infinite that could not be rationalised, but only expressed in myths and symbols.”[13] Under these circumstances, the Modern world’s ‘great discovering’ - the image that offers the three-dimensionality’s illusion - was nothing else than a pale imitation of the visible world, without having the chance to express more than this, without the opportunity to transcend the material condition in order to signify. On the contrary, the contemporary world’s three-dimension images not only that are not able to suggest a message, but also they do not intend to do it. The modern world refuses the idea that an image could open the gates towards a more profound knowledge of the material reality. It understands the idea of another world also inside of the co-ordinates of its own existence. The impossibility to explain is due to the lack of desire to understand.

Returning to the medieval image, from this perspective of the three-dimensional space and of the contemporary searches to copy the reality, the medieval art’s two-dimensionality does not look like a handicap that makes the devoted transmission of the message more difficult. On the contrary, it is the guarantee that permits to a shape to surpass the condition of pure image, becoming symbol and thus, passing point towards the true reality. “The most important key for the Medieval culture is the faith, as the foundation of the symbolic efficiency of the ritual, magical, and sacramental gestures”[14], of their image and implicitly, generally of the image.

Whether it is refused the fact that an image could be an efficient device to transcend the immediate reality, then it would never be accepted the idea that the medieval art is also today an authority.

Understanding thus the formal presence, the space and the time populated by it inside of the medieval art, this occupies a more important place in the Modern thought’s field. However, in order to accept it as it is, to accept its lesson, there is necessary a revision of the perspective (properly and figuratively) on the image’s part. Definitely, the art has been and still remains a silent witness of our manner to perceive and to understand the reality. It is perhaps the visible shape, the ‘drawing’ of our attitudes regarding the world.

 

 

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© ªerban Marin, January 2001, Bucharest, Romania

 

Last updated: July 2006

 

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[1] John Baldock, Simbolismo cristiano, Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1997: 52.

[2] Ibidem: 47.

[3] Ibidem: 15.

[4] Gerard de Champeaux, dom Sebastien Sterckx o.s.b., I simboli del medioevo, Milan: Editoriale Jaca Book, 1997: 248.

[5] John Baldock, op. cit.: 31.

[6] Jean-Claude Schmitt, Il gesto nel medioevo, Rome - Bari: Laterza, 1991: 8.

[7] Ibidem: 11.

[8] John Baldock, op. cit.: 15.

[9] Gerard de Champeaux, dom Sebastien Sterckx o.s.b. , op. cit.: 248.

[10] Ibidem.

[11] Jean-Claude Schmitt, op. cit.: 18.

[12] Ibidem: 11.

[13] Nicolaj Berdiajev, cf. John Baldock, op. cit.: 13.

[14] Jean-Claude Schmitt, op. cit.: 15.