Art and the Incarnation

Mattia Preti, *Saint Veronica with the Veil*, c. 1652- 1653, oil on canvas. LACMA

This visual essay is based on a talk I gave titled “What Really Happens When You See The Face of God” at the 2024 winter Newman Forum.

When the invisible God became incarnate and revealed His face in Jesus, the old covenant prohibition against making images of God, the angels, man, and creation was superseded. Artists gained both permission and responsibility to represent the face of God. Against multiple iconoclastic movements, the Church articulated the justification for representational art. We will briefly explore the Church’ defense (in the east and west) of sacred art, show how artists take up the seemingly impossible task of representing Beauty Himself, and discuss how the veneration and contemplation of sacred images help us to grow in our faith.

Old Covenant prohibition

Rembrandt van Rijn, *Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law,* 1659, oil on canvas. Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Like me (I am a convert to Catholicism), you might have sometimes wondered how and why the very explicit Commandment of God not to make representational images doesn’t prevent us from doing just that. As it says in the book of Exodus, immediately after “You shall have no other gods before me”:

“You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God [...]” (Exodus 20:4-6 RSV).

Designed by Thomas Newberry, Nineteenth-Century Architectural Model of King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, 1883. Gilded wood, gilded carton pierre; gilded silver, gilded bronze; enamel, linen. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Yet the apparent prohibition against all representational art is very soon followed in the book of Exodus by Divine instructions for the construction of the Sanctuary for the Arc of the Covenant replete with hammered gold and embroidered cherubim, almond blossoms, and pomegranates (Exodus 25-19); what’s more, all this ornamentation is merely a foretaste of the glorious artistry to that would be lavished on the Temple built under King Solomon (2 Chronicles 3-4).

Further, the artists commissioned to decorate the Sanctuary are selected by God Himself:

“See I have called by name Bezalel [...] and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship to devise artistic designs…” (Ex 31:1-7 ESV).

Scripture’s first description of artists are as hand-appointed by God and imbued with Divine inspiration and ability, for the purpose of glorifying Him by making representational imagery to adorn His dwelling place among His chosen people.

Let’s break this down and appreciate just what it shows us about artists and art:

Artists are called by name - this is a holy vocation that is given by God
Artistic talent and ability is a gift from God (that we can obviously nurture through study)
The first purpose of art is to honor God, especially in His dwelling place among us (churches)

Jan Gossaert, *Saint Luke Painting the Virgin*, c. 1520, oil on panel, Kunsthistorisches Museum. This painting by a Northern Renaissance artist imagines Saint Luke painting directly from a supernatural apparition of the Madonna and Child while his hand is guided by an angel.

Incarnation: artists receive permission and responsibility

Yet despite all the proliferation of representational art and the great dignity of artists under the Old Covenant, no one would have dared to make an image of the invisible God Himself. It was not until the Incarnation — the revelation of God in the incarnate person of Jesus Christ — that we could finally and actually see the face of God.

*Christ Pantocrator* from Saint Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, mid 6th-century, encaustic.

In the New Covenant in Christ, we (all Christians) are not only permitted, but are expected, to make images of God and the saints because of the Incarnation. Because the invisible God (who even Moses couldn’t see face to face) made Himself visible in Jesus Christ. As Jesus said to His disciples: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9 ESV). Jesus is the Word made flesh, and this fact elevates all flesh - all matter - making it possible to represent the Almighty Living God to our mere human senses.

As Saint John Damascene, a Doctor of the Church and great defender of icons, wrote in the 7th century:

“Of old, God the incorporeal and uncircumscribed was never depicted. Now, however, when God is seen clothed in flesh, and conversing with men, I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter […] who worked out my salvation through matter. I will not cease from honouring that matter which works my salvation. I venerate it, though not as God” (Apologia of St. John Manascene Against Those Who Decry Holy Images).

The saint clarifies two key points about sacred art:

1) that the Incarnation of God is the justification for His representation

2) that we venerate His image but worship/adore Him alone.

We are taught that the key to obeying and interpreting God’s commandment against graven images is to be found in the second part: “you shall not bow down to them or serve them.”

To venerate (proskuneo in Greek) literally means “to kiss.” To venerate something really means to have great spiritual affection for what it represents. Adoration must be given to God alone, without exception.

Unfortunately (for all of humanity) many Christians have not agreed, and have waged a war on images through repeated iconoclastic movements.

Giovanni Gasparro, *St. John Damascene and the ST. Virgin Tricherusa*, 2015, Oil on canvas, Private collection. Image copyright © Archivio dell'Arte / Luciano Pedicini.

Defense of Icons in the East, Triumph of Orthodoxy

Late 14th-century icon of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, showing Empress Theodora on the left of the central icon in the company of Orthodox saints and martyrs, the icon of the Theotokos and Child Jesus attributed to Saint Luke in the center.

The Church’s condemnation of iconoclasm (meaning “image breaking,” from Greek eikon "image" + klastes "breaker") and her theological defense of sacred art was first formalized during the Second Council of Nicea in 787 following years of violent destruction of sacred images under the reign of successive iconoclast Byzantine Emperors.

The Eastern Orthodox Church further celebrates the ‘Triumph of Orthodoxy’ on the first Sunday of Great Lent each year. This day commemorates the definitive defense of icons in the Orthodox Church as decreed in a regional synod held in 848 under Empress Theodora, following yet another span of iconoclast rulers.

The Monastery of the Virgin Mary of Arakas is a middle Byzantine Orthodox church located in Cyprus.

To appreciate all sacred art, it is invaluable to understand the Orthodox theology of icons. Although this form of sacred art has highly specific rubrics, it helps us to comprehend the highest aim of holy images. Icons do not just represent God and the Saints, they are windows into heaven, through which we can actually be in spiritual communion with those whom they depict. An icon shows God’s union with man, and man’s union with God.

The goal of praying with icons is, beyond giving due honor to God and His saints, nothing less than our own divinization through Jesus Christ, our own sanctification, or in the language of Orthodox theology, our “Theosis” — ultimate union with God.

Put another way, what ultimately happens when you see the face of God is that you become like Him:

“Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2 ESV)

We are destined for the beatific vision.

Sacred art allows us see how God has become like us, and thus inspires and assists us to become like Him both through the grace of God that flows through holy images, and by the intercession of the Saints in Heaven who may be depicted therein.

West, Counter-Reformation

Pasquale Cati, *Council of Tren*t, 1588, Santa Maria in Trastvere, Rome. The Church Triumphant is represented by the woman in Papal garb in the foreground crushing heresy personified underfoot.

Over 700 years after the Second Council of Nicea, the Council of Trent further articulated the role of sacred art, this time with more especial influence for artists and the Church in the west. The Council of Trent was a synod of the Catholic Church spanning 18 years, that started to meet in 1545 in order to reform and strengthen the Church after repeated attacks by Protestant Reformers. Sacred images were a focus of the final session in 1563.

This council ushered in what is may be referred to as post-Tridentine art of the Catholic Counter Reformation. Waves of one of the most destructive iconoclast movements in history compelled Mother Church to defend her tradition and treasury of art.

Damaged relief in Utrecht Cathedral, desecrated in 1566 during the iconoclast fury in the Netherlands

Sadly, the crisis of Protestant iconoclasm continued to spread; in the year 1566, there was a particularly violent outbreak in Northwestern Europe, in which churches were plundered and their art was publicly burned or mutilated.

Fans Hogenberg, print of the iconoclasts at work in in the Church of Our Lady in Antwerp, the “signature event” of the Beeldenstorm, 20 August 1566.

The Council of Trent tried to combat this latest iconoclasm by carefully explaining the importance of sacred images in churches and in devotional life while also cautioning against idolatry and superstition, and condemning art that represented false doctrine that could mislead the faithful. On the one hand the Church addressed the perennial heresy of gnosticism - the tendency to separate spirit from body and to demote the value of the sensual apprehension of God. And on the other hand, she warned against the neo-paganism and lewd sensualism which had become a problem in some Renaissance art.

Caravaggio, *The Incredulity of Saint Thomas*, c. 1601–1602. Sanssouci Picture Gallery, Potsdam, Germany.

Following the Council of Trent, a new wave of Catholic artists patronized by the Church in the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods became powerful counter-evangelists to the Reformation, inventing new visual forms to teach eternal truths of the faith, to make more tangible spiritual realities, and to showcase God’s mercy manifest in his condescension to our human lowliness.

The late 16th and early 17th-century baroque painter Caravaggio created larger-than-life radically new representations of the Gospel narratives. He portrays the precise moments of maximum drama and action (when Jesus is about to be arrested in the garden; when he invites St. Matthew to follow Him; when He is revealed in the blessing of the bread at the Supper in Emmaus; and here, when Saint Thomas places his finger in the Holy Wound in Christ’s side). Caravaggio also dressed many of his figures in contemporary Italian garb and often used very ordinary and unattractive people to pose for his paintings, inviting viewers to self-identify with the people encountering the (always beautiful) Incarnate God. Further, he used light and shadow (his technique is called “chiaroscuro”) to dramatically communicate meaning and to emphasize the message of Jesus as the light of the world.

Detail of *The Incredulity of Saint Thomas*

As art historian Elizabeth Lev writes, “As Protestants increasingly subsumed knowledge of God into the intellectual sphere, Catholic art strove to manifest the experiential, even the sensual, nature of oneness with the Lord” (How Catholic Art Saved the Faith).

El Greco, *The Penitent Magdalen*e, c. 1580-1585, oil on canvas, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City

El Greco was another of the great painters of the Catholic Counter Reformation. He was trained in Greece as an iconographer but developed an entirely new style of representation in his mature work for the Catholic Church in Italy and then Spain. He was deeply committed to creating new Christian art that appealed to the senses while also cultivated piety by not offending Christian modesty.

Second Vatican Council

Pier Paolo Pasolini, film still from *The Gospel According to Saint Matthew*, 1964. Acclaimed (and controversial) 20th-century Italian filmmaker and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini was in Assisi in 1962 at the invitation of Pope John XXIII who had called for a new dialogue with non-Catholic artists, when Pasolini supposedly read the Gospels for the first time an immediately conceived of a film adaptation. The Church’s respect for artists and the timeless power of the story of Salvation through Jesus continues to inspire artists across all genres.

The last (and much more recent) Church council that I will cite is the Second Vatican Council. The council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, “Sacrosanctum Concilium,” strongly champions sacred art, stating that:

“Very rightly the fine arts are considered to rank among the noblest activities of man's genius, and this applies especially to religious art and to its highest achievement, which is sacred art” (7th chapter,122).

Lucas Cranach the Elder (1519) and Michael Triegel (2022), tempera on panel, Naumburg Cathedral near Leipzig. This altarpiece, originally painted in the 16th-century by Lucas Cranach the Elder, was partially destroyed during an iconoclastic outbreak in 1541. The central part of the retable, which depicts the Virgin Mary with Child, was finally replaced in 2022 when a contemporary artist, Michael Triegel, was commissioned to paint a new central image for the altar. The finished altar is a unique example of continuity between past and present. Living artists like Triegel are tasked to perpetuate the *living tradition* of sacred art, by both learning from the great art of the past, and by following the inspirations of the Holy Spirit (who makes all things new) in the present (Revelation 21:5).

Supernatural Testimony

I want to briefly consider one other testimony of art’s importance for the faithful. This is the testimony of miraculous images.

From Left to Right: Manoppello Image of the Veil of Veronica; Relic image of the Veil, authorized by the Vatican, known as Sacri Vultus; the face on the Shroud of Turin.

The Shroud of Turin (arguably a photograph of the light of the Resurrection), the veil of Veronica, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the manifold weeping and bleeding statues and icons have been miraculously used by God as vehicles for His grace.

Detail of Our Lady of Guadalupe which miraculously appeared on the tilma of Saint Juan Diego in 1531

Icon of the Most-Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary on the iconostasis of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Chicago was discovered to appear to be weeping on September 8, 2019.

From the abundance of miraculous images and countless miracles attributed to praying with them, there can be no doubt whatsoever of God’s desire for us to pray with images, or the efficacy of doing so.

How artists represent beauty Himself

Giuseppe Sanmartino, Detail of *Veiled Christ*, 1755, marble, Cappella Sansevero, Naples

Now that we have firmly established the theological and spiritual importance of sacred art, I want to transition to how artists have responded to the task - the seemingly impossible task - of representing the face of God. Considering everything that we have seen, why do I still refer to this task, this calling, as seemingly impossible? Because Jesus is not only true God and true man but, as the second person of the Holy Trinity, He is Beauty Incarnate. God is not just beautiful, He is Beauty. Just as He is Truth and Goodness: the Ancient Transcendentals that Christian theology, in her wisdom, assimilated and perfected.

Therefore, the task of a sacred artist is not just: “make a picture of a beautiful face,” it is “make that face convey Divinity unlike all merely human faces” and more, “make that face represent perfect beauty.”

Personally, as an artist, if that’s all I had to work with I would give up right now.

But art has a cache of secret weapons that (I assert) equip it more adequately than any other method of communication to tackle the paradox of God’s dual Divinity and Humanity, and the mystery that Jesus Christ is both Beauty Incarnate and also the Man of Sorrows who “had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2 RSV).

Those secret weapons are:

Art employs symbolism that exceeds mere natural representation.

Icons are the best example of employing stylized symbols rather than imitation of nature (however beautiful). They have a codified visual vocabulary to show transfigured humans, the God-Man, and God the Father and the Holy Spirit. The Trinity is an icon created by the beloved Russian painter Andrei Rublev in the early 15th century.

The Trinity depicts the three angels who visited Abraham at the Oak of Mamre (Genesis 18:1–8), but the painting is full of symbolism and is interpreted as an icon of the Holy Trinity.

Art can simultaneously represent multiple facets of the Truth that elude logic or chronological presentation.

Jan Van Eyck, *The Crucifixion*, c. 1436-1438, oil on panel, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Let’s look at Jan van Eyck’s Crucifixion; the soldiers are ugly figures involved in the ugly acts of mockery, torture, and murder. The more closely one examines the details in this painting the more grotesque they become. This is an ugly subject, yet the beauty of jewel-like colors and the harmony of the composition imply how the brutal and unlovely moment of the Crucifixion is actually also a moment of sublime beauty and secret victory.

Art communicates more than the sum of its parts.

Finally, art communicates more than the sum of its parts, even considering those parts to be material, form, and subject. Art can pierce the heart and spirit through the senses, in a way that defies description. Beauty points beyond itself. And, admittedly, this is my favorite thing about art! This is, in fact, how I came to faith in God. Eight years ago, I attended a Tenebrae service (Spy Wednesday of Holy Week) at Saint John Cantius in Chicago. I had absolutely no idea what was happening, but as an artist and lover of beauty, I felt what was happening as Allegri’s Miserere resounded in the shadowed church, like a cry from the darkest depths of my soul somehow transfigured into angelic beauty, and I was on my knees in the dark sobbing my heart out in the most authentic prayer I had ever made.

A profound writer on this aspect of art is Pope Benedixt XVI. He explains that, “The encounter with the beautiful can become the wound of the arrow that strikes the heart and in this way opens our eyes [...]”

Bernini, Detail of *Ecstasy of Saint Teresa,* 1647–1652, Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome.

The baroque artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini based this sculpture on the mystical experience recorded by Saint Teresa in her autobiography. Describing the burning love of God she experienced, she wrote: “The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one cannot possibly wish it to cease, nor is one's soul content with anything but God.” Through its incredible beauty, Bernini’s sculpture reproduces a kind of echo of this mystical ecstasy to the viewer.

Pope Benedict XVI’s immediate predecessor, Saint Pope John Paul II, also eloquently reflects that “There is a certain unique sensitivity to beauty in the human soul; a kind of musical string that vibrates when a person meets up with beauty. Beauty delights and attracts. And because it attracts, this indicates that there is something else beyond it, which is hidden” (God is Beauty: A Retreat on the Gospel and Art).

This ‘woundingness’ of beauty, the yearning that it arouses in the soul, is, in fact, our homesickness for heaven, our longing for the beatific vision, our longing for the God who is beauty.

As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “Genuine sacred art draws man to adoration, to prayer, and to the love of God, Creator and Savior, the Holy One and Sanctifier” (2502).

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I will end with the assertion that genuine sacred art is more important for the Church and for the world today than ever before. The heresies of neo-gnosticism and iconoclasm are still rampant, and amid the constant bombardment of unholy images we need to return to the healing and sanctifying gaze of the Beautiful One revealed in sacred art.