Revelation in the Visual Arts

Abstract

This chapter deals with visual artworks as media of divine revelation. Readers gain insight into how Christianity as a religion of revelation has used images since the third century to transmit knowledge of God and his action in history. Early Christian pictures rate among the oldest communication media of revelation. Placed intentionally above the altar, the apse mosaics of late antique churches served anagogical purposes leading beyond the pictorial work to transcendent realities. The perception of images in the Middle Ages could represent the beginning of anagogical ascent towards the divine, engaging the viewer’s imagination. In Renaissance and baroque art occurred a rhetorical shift. Gazes and pointing gestures of the figures draw the viewer’s attention to the stage-like performance of the divine in a perspectival or visionary space. The issue frequently became controversial in contemporary history because the concord between artistic self-expression and the Judaeo-Christian understanding of revelation was no longer a given. At present, the individual responses to divine revelation continue.