Sacred and legendary art, volume 1 (of 2): Containing legends of the angels and archangels, the evangelists, the Apostles, the doctors of the church, and St. Mary magdalene, as represented in the fine arts.Jameson, Mrs. (Anna)
Religion
Sacred and legendary art, volume 1 (of 2): Containing legends of the angels and archangels, the evangelists, the Apostles, the doctors of the church, and St. Mary magdalene, as represented in the fine arts.
Jameson, Mrs. (Anna)
Christian art and symbolism; Christian saints in art
Here I must conclude this summary of the lives and characters of the
two greatest apostles, as they have been exhibited in Christian Art;
to do justice to the theme would have required a separate volume. One
observation, however, suggests itself, and cannot be passed over. The
usual type of the head of St. Peter, though often ill rendered and
degraded by coarseness, can in general be recognised as characteristic;
but is there among the thousand representations of the apostle Paul,
_one_ on which the imagination can rest completely satisfied? I know
not one. No doubt the sublimest ideal of embodied eloquence that ever
was expressed in Art is Raphael’s St. Paul preaching at Athens. He
stands there the delegated voice of the true God, the antagonist and
conqueror of the whole heathen world:—‘Whom ye ignorantly worship,
HIM declare I unto you’—is not this what he says? Every feature, nay,
every fold in his drapery, speaks; as in the other St. Paul leaning
on his sword (in the famous St. Cecilia), every feature and every
fold of drapery meditates. The latter is as fine in its tranquil
melancholy grandeur, as the former in its authoritative energy: in the
one the orator, in the other the philosopher, were never more finely
rendered: but is it, in either, the Paul of Tarsus whom we know? It
were certainly both unnecessary and pedantic to adhere so closely
to historic fact as to make St. Paul of diminutive stature, and St.
Peter weak-eyed: but has Raphael done well in wholly rejecting the
traditional portrait which reflected to us the Paul of Scripture,
the man of many toils and many sorrows, wasted with vigils, worn
down with travel, whose high bald forehead, thin flowing hair, and
long pointed beard, spoke so plainly the fervent and indomitable,
yet meditative and delicate, organisation,—and in substituting this
Jupiter Ammon head, with the dark redundant hair, almost hiding the
brow, and the full bushy beard? This is one of the instances in which
Raphael, in yielding to the fashion of his time, has erred, as it
seems to me,—though I say it with all reverence! The St. Paul rending
his garments at Lystra, and rejecting the sacrifice of the misguided
people, is more particularly false as to the character of the man,
though otherwise so grandly expressive, that we are obliged to admire
what our better sense—our _conscience_—cannot wholly approve.
* * * * *
I shall now consider the rest of the apostles in their proper order.
ST. ANDREW.
_Lat._ S. Andreas. _Ital._ Sant’ Andrea. _Fr._ St. André. Patron saint
of Scotland and of Russia. Nov. 30 A.D. 70.
St. Andrew was the brother of Simon Peter, and the first who was called
to the apostleship. Nothing farther is recorded of him in Scripture:
he is afterwards merely included by name in the general account of the
apostles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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