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Annuario 2000
p. 377
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
p. 378
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.
p. 382
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.
p. 383
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.
For this material,
permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for
educational purposes and personal use.
Whether you intend to utilize it in scientific purposes, indicate the
source: either this web adress or the Annuario. Istituto Romeno di cultura e
ricerca umanistica 2 (2000), edited by ªerban Marin and Ion Bulei, Venice,
2000
No permission is granted for
commercial use.
© ªerban Marin, January
2001, Bucharest, Romania
Last updated: July 2006
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Annuario 2000
[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.