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
Those subjects in which Judas Iscariot appears as a principal personage
follow here.
1. Angelico da Fiesole.[235] He is bribed by the Jews. The high-priest
pays into the hand of Judas the thirty pieces of silver. They are
standing before a doorway on some steps; Judas is seen in profile, and
has the nimbus as one of the apostles: three persons are behind, one
of whom expresses disapprobation and anxiety. In this subject, and in
others wherein Judas is introduced, Angelico has not given him ugly and
deformed features; but in the scowling eye and bent brow there is a
vicious expression.
In Duccio’s series of the ‘Passion of our Saviour,’ in the Duomo at
Siena, he has, in this and in other scenes, represented Judas with
regular and not ugly features; but he has a villanous, and at the same
time anxious, expression;—he has a bad conscience.
The scene between Judas and the high-priest is also given by Schalken
as a candle-light effect, and in the genuine Dutch style.
2. ‘Judas betrays his Master with a kiss.’ This subject will be noticed
at large in the Life of Christ. The early Italians, in giving this
scene with much dramatic power, never forgot the scriptural dignity
required; while the early Germans, in their endeavour to render Judas
as odious in physiognomy as in heart, have, in this as in many other
instances, rendered the awful and the pathetic merely grotesque. We
must infer from Scripture, that Judas, with all his perversity, had a
conscience: he would not else have hanged himself. In the physiognomy
given to him by the old Germans, there is no trace of this; he is an
ugly malignant brute, and nothing more.
3. Rembrandt. ‘Judas throws down the thirty pieces of silver in the
Temple, and departs.’[236]
4. ‘The remorse of Judas.’ He is seated and in the act of putting
the rope about his neck; beside him is seen the purse and the money,
scattered about the ground. The design is by Bloemart, and, from the
Latin inscription underneath, appears to be intended as a warning to
all unrighteous dealers.
5. ‘Judas hanging on a tree’ is sometimes introduced into the
background, in ancient pictures of the Deposition and the Entombment:
there is one in the Frankfort Museum.
6. ‘Demons toss the soul of Judas from hand to hand in the manner of a
ball:’ in an old French miniature.[237] This is sufficiently grotesque
in representation; yet, in the idea, there is a restless, giddy horror
which thrills us. At all events, it is better than placing Judas
between the jaws of Satan with his legs in the air, as Dante has done,
and as Orcagna in his Dantesque fresco has very literally rendered the
description of the poet.[238]
[Illustration: _Lionardo da Vinci_]
[Illustration: _Giotto_]
[Illustration: _Raphael_]
THE LAST SUPPER.
_Ital._ Il Cenacolo. La Cena. _Fr._ La Cène. _Ger._ Das Abendmal
Christi.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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