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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34917 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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I mean, that perspective is certainly important and present. There are lots of icons like that (and always have been; I think there are icons of Jesus looking like a Roman in the catacombs)! But I'm not convinced it was an overwhelming consensus across time and space (we're talking about probably more than 1900 years of practice over vast swaths of territory, not just medieval Europe).

My general sense is that people who hold to perspective (2) don't think that these icons are not real icons, just that they aren't ideal. This often applies to other aspects of iconography too; there's a lot of formal and informal rules about how icons are "supposed" to be painted in various Orthodox traditions, for instance, and a lot of people are somewhat uneasy with the "realistic" (western) style of many post-Peter-the-Great Russian icons.

Icons are interesting because they combine the symbolic and the representational; they depict people or events, but usually in a way that is symbolic and does not literally represent what happened. So "the icon is not a photograph, it is supposed to convey certain truths and should be painted in whatever way does that best" and "these are real people, you can't just make them look however you like" are both highly defensible, and have been defended. I'm inclined to the first one myself: we don't always have a good idea what the subjects looked like anyway, recognizability is more important than accuracy, and symbolism in e.g. clothing is uncontroversially more important than realism anyway.

My general sense is that people who hold to perspective (2) don't think that these icons are not real icons, just that they aren't ideal.

It has been a problem in Western art, too. You had Renaissance artists painting big, elaborate scenes allegedly based on Biblical sources but, uh, really not. Art historians tend to plump down on the side of "freedom of expression and developing one's art" rather than "this was supposed to be a Last Supper, not a rave at Studio 54":

The Feast in the House of Levi (1573) by Paolo Veronese was investigated by the Roman Inquisition, who asked, "Does it seem suitable to you, in the Last Supper of our Lord, to represent buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs, and other such absurdities?" and gave him three months to make changes. Veronese simply retitled it The Feast in the House of Levi.

We see this a lot with Caravaggio and the controversies over his naturalistic style when applied to religious subjects:

Caravaggio was known for painting very realistically, using models instead of standard convention and idealization.He made his figures lifelike and relatable, as opposed to portraying unrealistic or phony poses. In this instance, however, the patrons wanted an idealization of the beloved Saint, someone who its viewers could admire and strain to be like. They did not want a bumbling peasant who looked as if he just walked in off the street. With the angel sweeping down and the Saint's stool teetering in movement, it is arguably one of Caravaggio's earliest examples of his dynamic style. It was a much more exciting composition than the first. Even though Caravaggio changed the composition to suit the desires of the patron, you can still see his own style under the more refined subject of Saint Matthew.

...Caravaggio depicted the Saint as an unlearned peasant, gaping in the presence of the angel. The church rejected Caravaggio's irreverent presentation of the saint, and Caravaggio replaced it with a more glorifying image, The Inspiration of Saint Matthew, which remains in the Chapel today.

...The lost painting showed Saint Matthew as poorly groomed, with dirty feet. Although this was the style of Caravaggio, the church leaders thought it was too crude and did not want to have what looked like a peasant hanging in their sacred altarpiece.

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