At the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, there is a room featuring a number of paintings by Flemish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Vibrant in colour and detail, many of Bruegel’s paintings can appear like a Renaissance version of a…
‘There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists.’ [1] With these two provocative little sentences, E.H. Gombrich begins his famed book, The Story of Art. It is a surprising way to begin a relatively comprehensive guide to…
One of the more familiar stories from the Hebrew Bible comes from the ‘Call of Isaiah’ in Isaiah 6. The lines ‘Woe is me!’, ‘Here I am, send me!’ and the Trisagion, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy is Yhwh of Armies’, are…
Just before the dawn of the bloodiest century, Mark Twain conducted ‘scientific experiments’ in the London Zoological Gardens in which he contrasted the characteristics of the so-called ‘lower animals’ with those of human beings. His observations led him to renounce…
Chichester Cathedral houses two 20th paintings of the Baptism of Christ[1]: one by Hans Feibusch (1951/77) in the Baptistery, the other by Patrick Procktor (1984) in the chapel of John the Baptist. Hans Feibusch (1898-1998) was a German Jewish artist…
Editor’s Note: This article is the second in a series by Naomi Billingsley, who will be writing on reflections on art at Chichester Cathedral. In my previous piece about the art at Chichester, I discussed some of the oldest works in the…
A few years ago, when I taught an undergraduate ‘systematic theology for artists’ class, we looked at the traditional ways certain biblical scenes are portrayed in Western visual art. There is a grammar to them—standard symbols, colours and placement—that allow…
Richard Viladesau. The Pathos of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in Theology and the Arts—The Baroque Era. Oxford, UK—New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014. xvi + 344 pgs. Hardback. £35.99. ISBN: 9780199352685. Richard Viladesau’s compellingly written The Pathos…
John Harvey, The Bible as Visual Culture; When Text Becomes Image, The Bible in the Modern World 52 (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Phoenix Press) 2013, xii + 200pp, £50/$80 hardcover. John Harvey, Professor of Art at Aberystwyth University, Wales, has provided…