Expert answer:Clifton Olds in St Luke Painting the Virgin
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Questions on C. Olds, “St. Luke Painting the Virgin: A Renaissance
Artist’s Cultural Legacy,” Journal of Aesthetic Education XXIV:1 (1990), pp. 89-96
1.
It takes Clifton Olds quite a while to state his thesis (this article is not a very good
model to follow when writing your papers!), but he does finally get around to making an
argument. What is his general point about Gossaert’s St. Luke Painting the Virgin?
2.
What were the objections that theologians raised against the display of images in the
Christian church? What were the arguments in favor?
3.
Where does the author locate the beginnings of the “iconoclastic sentiment”?
4.
What are the “iconographic peculiarities” of the Vienna St. Luke as compared to the
Prague St. Luke of 1512-15? (See image below.) Why does Gossaert include these
iconographic peculiarities? What “argument” does Gossaert’s Vienna painting make
about religious images and the role of the artist?
Jan Gossaert’s “St. Luke Painting the Virgin”: A Renaissance Artist’s Cultural Literacy
Author(s): Clifton Olds
Source: Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 24, No. 1, Special Issue: Cultural Literacy and
Arts Education (Spring, 1990), pp. 89-96
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3332857
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Jan Gossaert’s St. LukePainting the Virgin:
A Renaissance Artist’s Cultural Literacy
CLIFTON OLDS
Sometime between 1520 and 1530, the Netherlandish artist Jan Gossaert
produced an unusual version of a not-unusual subject: Saint Luke painting
(in this case drawing) the Virgin.1 The painting, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, shows the Evangelist kneeling at a prayer desk
that now serves as an easel, his right hand guided by a solicitous angel as
he works on a silver-point drawing of Mary and the Christ Child. The fact
that Luke has removed his shoes indicates that he occupies sacred ground,
although we are hard pressed to identify it. The setting is a peculiar and
rather cramped hall or court, its architectural details reflecting Gossaert’s
familiarity with current trends in Italian Renaissance design, but providing
us with little information about the nature or function of the interior. In an
arcaded niche directly behind the kneeling Evangelist, a circular and colonnaded pedestal supports a sculpture of Moses holding the tablets of the
law. The subjects of Luke’s drawing-the Virgin and her Child-hover in a
brilliant cloud suspended above the floor and are attended by five putti,
two of whom prepare to place a crown upon the head of Mary. As impressive as is the setting, the scene is remarkably intimate, the modest and
deferential artist laboring to record an apparition that floats just before his
eyes.
Although St. Luke’s activity as an artist is not recorded in canonic literature, his painting of the Virgin was mentioned in Greek texts as early as the
sixth century and in the Latin West by the twelfth century.2 It was popularly believed that this portrait was extant (scores of Byzantine or Eastern
European icons have been identified as the work of Luke) and that the type
of Madonna commonly known as the hodegetria was based on this illustrious prototype. Thus credited with being the first Christian artist, Luke
became the patron saint of painters-painters who saw to it that images of
CliftonOlds is Edith Cleaves Barry Professor of Art History at Bowdoin College.
Among his recent work are Winter,coauthoredwith Donald Hall. He has written a
numberof articleson arthistoryand is a past contributorto this journal.
Vol. 24, No. 1, Spring1990
JournalofAestheticEducation,
?1990 Boardof Trusteesof the Universityof Illinois
90
Clifton Olds
St. Luke painting the Virgin adorned their guild halls as evidence of the
legitimacy of their art.3
It was a legitimacy that often had been called into question, particularly
in the early years of the religion. As heirs to Judaic tradition, many early
Christians believed that the commandments of the Old Testament God
were as binding upon them as upon the followers of Judaism, and one of
those commandments-the first or the second depending upon one’s reading of the decalogue-forbade the making of images (“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…” Exodus 20:4). Allegiance to this prohibition may explain why few
if any Christian images can be dated before the third century A.D., and
even after such images began to appear around the shores of the Mediterranean, opposition to their creation continued. It reached a climax in the
Iconoclastic Controversy of the Eastern Church, a fundamentalist movement that insisted not only upon a literal interpretation of the Mosaic
prohibition, but also upon the destruction of images already created.4 The
Latin Church experienced nothing like this officially sanctioned iconoclasm,
but it has always harbored influential voices ready to condemn-to one degree or another-the creation of art. Among the early fathers of the Church,
men like Origen, Tertullian, and Augustine were particularly opposed to
imagery, fearing that the mere creation of an image led directly to idolatry.
Tertullian put it in the most succinct terms when he stated: “Both the
making and the worship of an idol are forbidden by God. Insofar as the
making of a thing precedes its worship, so far, if the worship is unlawful,
the prohibition of its making logically precedes the prohibition of its worship.”5
Rebuttals to this charge were numerous, and they usually focused upon
one or more of three tenets: (1) that Judaic Law is not necessarily binding
upon Christians, (2) that idolatry is synonymous only with the worship of
images, not with their creation, and (3) that imagery is of practical value in
communicating with those unable to read. More than one early Church
father emphasized the didactic efficacy of imagery, but Gregory the Great
put the defense into its most memorable and widely quoted form when he
held that “to adore images is one thing; to teach with their help what
should be adored is another. What Scripture is to the educated, images are
to the ignorant, who see through them what they must accept; they read in
them what they cannot read in books.”6
This argument was to be repeated by churchmen as illustrious as Bede
and St. Bonaventure and to be given scholastic dignity by St. Thomas Acquinas. Faithful to his Neoplatonic antecedents, Acquinas argued that our
knowledge of universals is based upon our observation of concrete par-
A Painter’s Cultural Literacy
91
I
I
I
Fig. 1 Jan Gossaert(Netherlandish,c. 1478-1532),St. LukePaintingthe Virgin(betw.
1520 and 1530). Oil on panel, 43 1/8 x 32 1/4 inches (24 x 30 cm.). Vienna,
KunsthistorischesMuseum.Reproducedwith permission.
92
CliftonOlds
ticulars and that through the perception of physical things and the images
of things we may come to understand superior levels of truth: “It is natural
that we attain the intelligible through the sensible because all our
knowledge derives from our senses.”7
Considering the long history of this controversy and its potential threat
to the livelihood of those who produce images, it is understandable that
theologians and artists alike should call attention to Luke’s creative activity.
If this contemporary of Christ, this close friend of Paul, this divinely inspired writer of the Gospel, should find it permissible to paint a picture of
the Virgin, then certainly such an activity was sanctioned by God. As Acquinas put it: “The Apostles, inspired by the Holy Spirit, gave to the
Church those teachings which they did not record in words … wherefore
St. Luke is said to have painted the likeness of Christ which is in Rome.”8
A painting of St. Luke at his easel thus became the aesthetic counterpart
of Gregory’s apologia, a visual rebuttal to the argument that such an act
leads directly to idolatry. Displayed prominently in the Guild Halls of St.
Luke, pictures like that of Gossaert essentially justified their own existence.
But the attack on imagery was to be mounted again in the sixteenth century, and this is the context in which Gossaert’s Vienna painting takes on
additional significance.
In 1522, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, one of Luther’s most militant
followers, published his Von Abtuhung der Bylder, an ardent attack on
religious imagery, setting in motion a wave of iconoclastic sentiment that
eventually would result in the actual destruction of art.9 Simply stated,
Karlstadt believed that the law of Moses was normative for the Christian
world and that the second commandment meant exactly what it said. Although Luther did not share Karlstadt’s views, other reformers did: Ulrich
Zwingli began his attack on images in 1523, and his sermons led to the official suppression of religious art in Zurich in 1524.10 An outbreak of
iconoclasm also struck Strasbourg in that same year. These were isolated instances-it would not be until the last third of the century that northern
Europe would experience the wholesale destruction of its religious art-but
artists active in the 1520s must have been worried by this resurgent
iconoclasm. Albrecht Diirer, in the dedication to his Unterweisung der Messung, published in 1525, notes that at that moment the art of painting was
under attack and “is said to serve idolatry.”ll He then goes on to defend
religious art in terms not unlike those employed almost a millennium earlier by Gregory the Great.
Although the specific date of Gossaert’s St. Luke is impossible to determine, its style suggests that he produced it sometime in the 1520s, or in
other words in the decade in which religious art was coming under attack
from reformers whose writings must have been known in the Netherlands
(Karlstadt’s treatise was available in printed copies by the end of 1522).
A Painter’s Cultural Literacy
93
Gossaert was at that time employed by the house of Burgundy, until 1524
by Philip of Burgundy and thereafter by Philip’s nephew Adolph. As
staunch Catholics (Philip had been named Bishop of Utrecht in 1517),
Gossaert’s Burgundian patrons must have been concerned by events occurring in Germany and Switzerland, and it would be surprising if Gossaert
did not share their concern. Although his painting of the Evangelist was undoubtedly produced for a Guild of St. Luke and not for his noble
employers, it must certainly be considered the work of an artist working in
a Catholic world and familiar with the traditional defense of religious imagery. It is in that light that one must consider the iconographic
peculiarities of the work.
Some years earlier, probably between 1512 and 1515, Gossaert had
painted the same subject on a panel now in the National Gallery of
Prague.12 Although this earlier version was innovative in its use of
Italianate architecture and pagan sculpture, Gossaert’s interpretation of the
Evangelist and the Madonna followed a tradition that harks back to Rogier
van der Weyden’s famous St. Luke in Boston, where Mary assumes the
earth-bound posture of the Madonna of Humility and where Luke labors
unassisted to record her image. Aside from the question of whether Luke
could actually have seen and painted Mary and her Child, these earlier
works present us with a straightforward image of an artist and his model.
In the Vienna version, however, the event is clearly more miraculous than
mundane. The Madonna is a vision, not a living presence, which explains
why Luke’s eyes are upon his drawing and not upon the apparition: he sees
her inwardly. And his effort is directed by a higher power, an angel who
actually guides his hand.
It is difficult not to see these departures from the traditional rendering of
the scene as specific responses to the growing threat of iconoclasm. Against
the charge that the creation of a work of art is both idolatrous and arrogant
(arrogant in the sense that the artist is challenging the autonomy of the
Creator) artists of the Renaissance held that their talent was a divine gift
and that their efforts were in the service of God, not in competition with
Him. Leonardo da Vinci, although not a religious man in the orthodox
sense, saw the art of painting as “the grandchild of nature and related to
God.”13 As early as 1512, Diirer, as if anticipating the acts of the Protestant
iconoclasts, wrote that “those who suppress the arts extinguish noble genius … it is a great misdeed to destroy great and masterly works which were
invented with much trouble, work, and time given by the Grace of God.”14
That the Grace of God is active in Gossaert’s Vienna painting can hardly be
denied, since the Evangelist has been granted a vision of Mary as well as
divine assistance in recording that vision. In short, the act of painting becomes not only a devotional exercise, but a genuine revelation.
As if the miraculous elements in the Vienna painting were not enough to
94
Clifton Olds
prove God’s sanction of the artist’s role, Gossaert has also included a detail
that speaks directly to the question of whether Mosaic law forbids all imagery. The sculptured figure of Moses holding the tablets of the law might
seem an almost perverse addition to a painting that defies the Judaic ban on
image making, but a close examination of the figure reveals that Moses is
pointing to that area of the tablets where one finds the first commandment,
and it is on the definition of that commandment that the arguments for or
against imagery are often centered. From the earliest years of Christianity,
there have existed two interpretations of the structure of the Decalogue.
One (often called the Philonic) assumes that the first commandment insists
only on loyalty to one God, the prohibition against image making thus constituting the second commandment. A second interpretation (the so-called
Augustinian) maintains that the verse beginning with “You shall not make
for yourself a graven image” actually belongs with the first commandment
and that the second simply warns against taking the name of the Lord in
vain (this division requires a splitting of the verse on covetousness in order
to maintain the number ten). While arguments about these divisions may
seem overly subtle, the question of whether the prohibition against image
making was important enough to deserve its own commandment was crucial to any debate on the subject. Those who considered the ban on imagery
to be simply part of the general warning against polytheism could maintain
that the Lord was selective in his prohibition, that only those images that
were intended as objects of worship were forbidden. Those who granted
the ban on images separate status as the second commandment thereby
made it absolute.
As one might expect, the Roman Church held with the Augustinian
view, as did Luther, who in contrast to Karlstadt did not oppose religious
art. Calvin, on the other hand, favored the Philonic version, which gives the
ban on imagery special status. The degree to which this doctrinal division
was being discussed in Gossaert’s day is difficult to determine, but it seems
very likely that the Moses of the Vienna panel points to the first commandment in order to remind us that there, and only there, does one find God’s
admonition about image making, and that in that context He refers only to
the images of false gods.
Gossaert’s painting thus becomes a powerful defense of the artist, whose
gifts are obviously God-given, whose hand is guided by an agent of the
Lord, whose vision is truly visionary, whose profession can boast of a saintly Evangelist, and whose obedience to Mosaic law does not preclude the
creation of works of art. As a response to those who preached the abolition
of religious imagery, it makes an argument that would echo throughout the
years of the Counter-Reformation.
There is, of course, a built-in danger in using the term “cultural literacy”
to describe Gossaert’s understanding of the religious and social issues of his
A Painter’s Cultural Literacy
95
day, since “literacy” implies knowledge expressed in words. In that sense,
all iconographic interpretations of works of art are, to one degree or
another, speculative, since the verbal translation of nonverbal messages is
inescapably flawed. If we broaden the definition of literacy to include an intuitive comprehension of cultural patterns and pressures, however, we enlarge the horizons of interpretation and at the same time do justice to the
complexity of the creative process. If we can say nothing else than that
Gossaert’s St. Luke “fits” the intellectual pattern of early sixteenth-century
thought, we have at least enriched our understanding of the painting and
the pattern as a whole.
NOTES
1. The painting is on panel, and measures43 1/8 x 32 1/4 inches. Jan Gossaert,
who also called himself Mabuse,was born in Maubeugearound the year 1478.
He is recordedas a memberof the AntwerpGuild of St. Lukein 1503.While in
the employ of Philip of Burgundy,he worked in Middelburgand Utrechtand
accompaniedPhilipon a tripto Romein 1508.AfterPhilip’sdeath in 1524,Gossaertworked for a numberof othernoble patrons,including Adolph of Burgundy and the King of Denmark.He died in 1532.The best survey of his life and
Malerei(Berlinand Leiden:
work is still Max Friedlander’sDiealtniederldndische
1924-37),English trans.H. Norden (New York:FrederickA. Praeger,1967-76),
vol. 8.
2. For a review of the literature,see D. Klein, St. Lukasals Maler der Maria,
derLukas-Madonna
(Berlin:1933).
Ikonographie
3. The subjectappearedin Byzantinemanuscriptsas early as the eleventh century
and in Westernart as early as the fourteenth.See R. Goffen, “Iconand Vision:
GiovanniBellini’sHalf-LengthMadonnas,”Art Bulletin57, no. 4 (1975):487-518,
esp. 505-9.
4. TheIconoclasticControversylasted from726 until 843,althoughbriefperiodsof
toleranceinterruptedthe prohibitionand destructionof images.
5. Quinti SeptimiFlorentisTertullianide Idolatria,chap. 3, trans. Caecilia DavisWeyer in C. Davis-Weyer,EarlyMedievalArt, Sources and Documents in the
Historyof ArtSeries(EnglewoodCliffs,N.J.:Prentice-Hall,1971).
6. Davis-Weyer,EarlyMedievalArt,p. 48.
7. Thomas Acquinas,SummaTheologica,
I, q. 1, art. 9. For medieval attacksupon,
and defenses of, imagery,see J. Philips, TheReformation
of Images:Destructionof
Art in England,1535-1660(Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1973),chap.
in Judaism,Christianity
1;J. Gutmann,ed., TheImageandtheWorld:Confrontations
and Islam (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press for the American Academy of
Religion,1977).
8. SummaTheologica,III,q. 25, art.3.
9. See R. Sider, AndreasBodensteinvon Karlstadt,Th …
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