Dusty Art

My prior Art posts can be found HERE.

How do we move away from being a civilization that produces art that causes comments like, “my five year old could make this,” back to being one that creates beauty and inspires deep questions? We must reject modernity and embrace tradition. To embrace tradition, we must first learn about it..

Let’s study art history together.

The Disrobing of Christ

Artist	El Greco
Year	1577–1579
Medium	oil on canvas
Dimensions	285 cm × 173 cm (112 in × 68 in)
Location	Sacristy of Toledo Cathedral

This painting by the famous artist, El Greco, probably depicts Jesus Christ in a way that is unfamiliar to an American Christian audience. Jesus is wearing all red? Well, yeah. In a lot of modern art, you see Jesus depicted in white, with some kind of blue sash across his chest. However, in ancient Greek and Roman art spanning through the Byzantine period and through the early Renaissance, Jesus was frequently (usually) depicted as wearing a red tunic, overlaid with something blue.

Some of that is artistic symbolism. Some of it is textual mystery.

The Gospel of John describes Roman soldiers casting lots for Jesus’s clothes. That implies 1) that the tunic he was wearing was seemless – otherwise they would just divided it up, and 2) that it was of a high enough quality that they would want it.

In the Gospel of Matthew and Mark, the text describes that the Roman soldiers, in order to mock Jesus, putt a scarlet robe on Jesus after stripping him.

The painting above depicts Jesus’s own tunic, though, and it was common for centuries to depict him dressed in this manner – though El Greco emphasizes the color in dramatic fashion.

(more on the historical tunic of Jesus, via wiki)

Seamless robe of Jesus

The Seamless Robe of Jesus (also known as the Holy Robe, Holy Tunic, Holy Coat, Honorable Robe, and Chiton of the Lord) is the robe said to have been worn by Jesus during or shortly before his crucifixion. Competing traditions claim that the robe has been preserved to the present day. One tradition places it in the Cathedral of Trier, another places it in Argenteuil‘s Basilique Saint-Denys, and several traditions claim that it is now in various Eastern Orthodox churches, notably Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta, Georgia.

Bible passage

According to the Gospel of John, the soldiers who crucified Jesus did not divide his tunic after crucifying him, but cast lots to determine who would keep it because it was woven in one piece, without seam. A distinction is made in the New Testament Greek between the himatia (literally “over-garments”) and the seamless robe, which is chiton, (literally “tunic” or “coat”).

Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments (ta himatia) and divided them into four parts, to every soldier a part, and the coat (kai ton chitona). Now the coat was without seam, woven whole from the top down. Therefore, they said among themselves, let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose it will become. Thus the saying in Scripture was fulfilled: they divided My raiment (ta imatia) among them, and upon My vesture (epi ton himatismon) did they cast lots.

— John 19:23–24; quoting the Septuagint version of Psalm 21 [22]:18–19

Trier tradition

According to legend, Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, discovered the seamless robe in the Holy Land in 327 or 328 along with several other relics, including the True Cross. According to different versions of the story, she either bequeathed it or sent it to the city of Trier, where Constantine had lived for some years before becoming emperor. The monk Altmann of Hautvillers wrote in the 9th century that Helena was born in that city, though this report is strongly disputed by most modern historians.

The history of the Trier robe is certain only from the 12th century, when Archbishop Johann I of Trier consecrated an altar which contained the seamless robe in early 1196. Although biographies of Johann I state that this was not the first time the robe was displayed, there are no historical dates or events presented which predate 1196. Sections of taffeta and silk have been added to the robe, and it was dipped in a rubber solution in the 19th century in an attempt to preserve it. The few remaining original sections are not suitable for carbon dating. The stigmatist Therese Neumann of Konnersreuth declared that the Trier robe was authentic.

The relic is normally kept folded in a reliquary and cannot be directly viewed by the faithful. In 1512, during an Imperial Diet, Emperor Maximilian I demanded to see the Holy Robe which was kept in the Cathedral. Archbishop Richard von Greiffenklau arranged the opening of the altar that had enshrined the tunic since the building of the Dome and exhibited it. The people of Trier heard about that and demanded to see the Holy Robe. Subsequently, pilgrimages took place first annually, then every seven years, in accordance with the Aachen pilgrimages. However, after 1545, pilgrimages were irregularly done due to warring in Europe. The pilgrimage occurrences are as follows: 1513, 1514, 1515, 1516, 1517, 1524, 1531, 1538, 1545, 1655, 1810, 1844, 1891, 1933, 1959, 1981, 1996, 2006, and 2012.

The 1844 exhibition of the relic, on the instructions of Wilhelm Arnoldi, Bishop of Trier, led to the formation of the German Catholics (Deutschkatholiken), a schismatic sect formed in December 1844 under the leadership of Johannes Ronge. The 1996 exhibition of the tunic was seen by over one million pilgrims and visitors. Since then, the Bishopric of Trier has conducted an annual ten-day religious festival called the “Heilig-Rock-Tage”.

Argenteuil tradition

According to the Argenteuil tradition, the Empress Irene made a gift of the seamless robe to Charlemagne in about 800. Charlemagne gave it to his daughter Theodrada, abbess of Argenteuil, where it was preserved in the church of the Benedictines. In 1793, the parish priest, fearing that the robe would be desecrated in the French Revolution, cut the robe into pieces and hid them in separate places. Only four of the pieces remain. They were moved to the present church of Argenteuil in 1895.

The earliest document referring to the robe at Argenteuil dates from 1156, written by Archbishop Hugh of Rouen. He described it as the garment of the child Jesus. A long-running dispute claims that the Argenteuil cloth is not the seamless robe worn by Jesus during the crucifixion, but the garments woven for him by the Virgin Mary and worn his entire life. Advocates of the theory that the Argenteuil cloth is the seamless robe claim that the Trier robe is Jesus’s mantle.

Eastern traditions

The Eastern Orthodox Church has also preserved a tradition regarding the clothing of Jesus which was divided among the soldiers after the crucifixion.

According to the tradition of the Georgian Orthodox Church, the chiton was acquired by a Jewish rabbi from Georgia named Elioz (Elias), who was present in Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion and bought the robe from a soldier. He brought it with him when he returned to his native town of Mtskheta, Georgia, where it is preserved to this day beneath a crypt in the Patriarchal Svetitskhoveli Cathedral. The feast day in honor of the “Chiton of the Lord” is celebrated on 1 October.

A portion of the himation was also brought to Georgia, but it was placed in the treasury of the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, where it remained until the seventeenth century. Then the Persian Shah Abbas I, when he invaded Georgia, carried off the robe. At the insistence of the Russian ambassador and Tsar Michael Feodorovich, the Shah sent the robe as a gift to Patriarch Philaret (1619–1633) and Tsar Michael in 1625. The authenticity of the robe was attested by Nectarius, Archbishop of Vologda, by Patriarch Theophanes of Jerusalem and by Joannicius the Greek. Reports also circulated at that time of miraculous signs being worked through the relic.

Later, two portions of the robe were taken to Saint Petersburg: one in the cathedral at the Winter Palace, and the other in Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral. A portion of the Robe was also preserved at the Cathedral of the Dormition in Moscow, and small portions at Kyiv‘s Sophia Cathedral, at the Ipatiev monastery near Kostroma and at certain other old temples.

The Russian Orthodox Church commemorates the Placing of the Honorable Robe of the Lord at Moscow on 10 July (25 July N.S.). At Moscow annually on that day, the robe is solemnly brought out of the chapel of the Apostles Peter and Paul at the Dormition cathedral, and it is placed on a stand for veneration by the faithful during the divine services. After the Divine Liturgy the robe is returned to its former place. Traditionally, on this day the propers chanted are of “the Life-Creating Cross”, since the day on which the relic was actually placed was the Sunday of the Cross, during Great Lent of 1625.

So there is competing tradition about the tunic. One of these stories does not necessarily disprove another, though. It is quite possible that Jesus owned more than one tunic and that more than one ended up as a holy relic. That said, to the extent any tradition claims that the tunic is the very one taken by soldiers, it is unlikely that he was wearing three tunics at once during the trial leading up to his crucifixion.

And now with a historical context firmly in your mind, let’s read about the famous painting. (via wiki)

The Disrobing of Christ or El Expolio (Latin: Exspolĭum) is a painting by El Greco begun in the summer of 1577 and completed in the spring of 1579 for the High Altar of the sacristy of the Cathedral of Toledo, where it still normally hangs. In late 2013 it was on temporary display at the Prado in Madrid (with the other El Grecos), following a period of cleaning and conservation work there; it was returned to Toledo in 2014. It is one of El Greco‘s most famous works. A document dated July 2, 1577 which refers to this painting is the earliest record of El Greco’s presence in Spain. The commission for the painting was secured thanks to El Greco’s friendship from Rome with Luis, the son of Diego de Castilla, the dean of the Cathedral of Toledo. De Castilla senior also arranged El Greco’s other major commission, on which he worked simultaneously, the paintings for the Toledan church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo.

Description

The painting shows Christ looking up to Heaven with an expression of serenity; His idealized figure seems segregated from the other people and the violence surrounding him. A figure dressed in black in the background points at Christ accusingly, while two others argue over who will have His garments. A man in green to Christ’s left holds Him firmly with a rope and is about to rip off His robe in preparation for his crucifixion. At the lower right, a man in yellow bends over the cross and drills a hole to facilitate the insertion of a nail to be driven through Christ’s feet. The radiant face of the Savior is violently juxtaposed to the coarse figures of the executioners, who are amassed around Him creating an impression of disturbance with their movements, their gestures and lances.

Christ is clad in a bright red robe; it is on this red tunic that El Greco concentrated the full expressive force of his art. The purple garment (a metonymic symbol of the divine passion) is spread out in a light fold; only the chromatic couple of yellow and blue in the foreground raises a separate note which approaches, in power, the glorifying hymn of the red.

In the left foreground, the three Marys contemplate the scene with distress. Their presence was objected to by the Cathedral authorities, since they are not mentioned as present at this point in the Gospels. Greco probably took this detail, with some others like the rope around Christ’s wrists, from the account in the Meditations on the Passion of Jesus Christ by Saint Bonaventure. The placement of the tormentors higher than the head of Christ also was cited by the commissioners of the Cathedral in the arbitration process over the price.

In designing the composition vertically and compactly in the foreground El Greco seems to have been motivated by the desire to show the oppression of Christ by his cruel tormentors. The figure of Christ, robust, tall and tranquil, dominates the center of the composition which is built vertically like a wall. El Greco chose a method of space elimination that is common to middle and late 16th-century Mannerists. According to Harold Wethey, El Greco “probably recalled late Byzantine paintings in which the superposition of heads row upon row is employed to suggest a crowd”.

Critical analysis

Wethey regards the painting as a “masterpiece of extraordinary originality”. The powerful effect of the painting especially depends upon his original and forceful use of colour. Something of the effect of the grand images of the Saviour in Byzantine art is recalled; by this date the disrobing was a rare subject in Western art. The motif of the crowding round Christ suggests an acquaintance with the works of Northern artists, like Bosch (the best collection of whose works belonged to Philip II); the figure preparing the Cross could be derived from the similar figure bending forward in Raphael‘s tapestry and cartoon of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, which he would have known from Rome. This is, however, the last time that there are any hints of specific borrowings. The original altar of gilded wood that El Greco designed for the painting has been destroyed, but his small sculpted group of the Miracle of St. Ildefonso still survives on the lower center of the frame.

Arbitration

The Disrobing of Christ was a subject of a dispute between the painter and the representatives of the Cathedral regarding the price of the work; El Greco was forced to have recourse to legal arbitration and eventually received only 350 ducats, when his own appraiser had valued it at 950. He was also supposed to remove some of the figures objected to, which he never did.

Variants

Despite the complaints of the commissioners of the Cathedral the painting was hugely successful; currently, more than 17 versions of the painting are known. Two greatly reduced versions are generally accepted as from the hand of El Greco himself; possibly one may have been an oil sketch study, or, more likely, a studio record of the composition. Other replica versions may also be in whole or part by the master himself. A 1581-1586 autograph or studio copy has been in the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon since 1886.

A c.1600 variant of the work is in the National Gallery in Oslo, Norway — this is attributed to the artist. Another in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich is thought to be an autograph preparatory sketch for the main work.

A version is also on display at Upton House in Warwickshire, England.

For a great review of the painting, I direct you to the following video: