The first image of the Resurrection as a “snapshot” of an actual event is in Pietro Lorenzetti’s Resurrection of 1320, followed a few years later by Ugolino di Nerio in his Santa Croce Altar piece of 1324.
Artistically influenced by Giotto, in these paintings Christ continues to be earthbound, his burial cloth hanging from his limbs as he steps up and out of his tomb. The soldiers sleeping at his feet inhabit the same realistic space. This particular scene, being non-scriptural, has been rejected in traditional Orthodox imagery. Yet, Jesus did exit from the tomb, it was an event that happened, and therefore within the canon of Occidental art it is perfectly acceptable.
Between 1300 and 1500, this new version of the Resurrection continues to be a dominant theme in the artistic oeuvre. Fra Angelico depicts the traditional themes of Resurrection in the developing western style. His Harrowing of Hell is a straightforward and rather uninteresting scene of Christ freeing Adam and others from Hades .
In Fra Angelico’s Christ Resurrected and the Maries at the Tomb, he includes the figure of Christ in a glorious mandorla hovering above the open sarcophagus.
Piero della Francesca takes Ugolino’s model and gives it new life. Piero’s figures have a very specific individuality and are set into a precise illusionistic space.
This depiction of the body of Christ, both strong and tender, exiting from his earthly tomb, becomes the model for Western artists’ depiction of the Lord for the next several hundred years.
Titian 1544
Cecco da Carravaggio 1619
Noyel Coypel 1700
Carl Bloch 1881
1 comment:
The Western-style Resurrection icon was later adapted for Orthodoxy, as in this example:
http://bonovox.squarespace.com/storage/resurrection%20icon.bmp
I find this icon reminiscent of the Ark of the Covenant, upon which the God of Israel was understood to be enthroned "between the cherubim". The angels seated upon the Tomb are like the cherubim on the cover of the Ark, flanking the triumphant Christ.
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