To Jim Bugslag, Nancy Bishop, John Hall, and Leah Rutchick. Thank-you all
so much for enlightening me on the Cross Nimbus (Jim, your summary was
encyclopedic!) You are not only Sapientes, but also Benevolentes.
--Christopher
== original message from Christopher Mislow ==
> The current discussion regarding the frequency of a Cross Nimbus raises,
> for me, an embarrassing confession of ignorance; i.e., exactly what is a
> Cross Nimbus? (I have been unable to locate a photograph or diagram, but
> would assume -- from "nimbus" -- a cross with trefoils at the
extremities,
> similiar to a Cross Botontée.)
== reply from John Hall ==
> I imagine what is meant is a nimbus within which the arms of a cross are
> evident for example in Petrus Christus, Young Man in an Interior, panel
c. 1450,
> London, National Gallery Anonymous, The Mosaic Icon c. 1300 at Santa
Croce in
> Gerusalemme, Rome Israhel van Meckenem, Vera Icon, engraving c. 1440
Plenty
> of art books have examples but one can see a range in the widely
available Henk van
> Os, The Art of Devotion in the late Middle Ages in Europe 1300-1500,
Rijksmuseum,
> Amsterdam, 1995
== reply from Nancy Bishop ==
> A crossed nimbus is a stylistic convention used to identify the person of
> Christ. This is especially helpful when there are many bearded holy
people
> depicted in a scene. The cross is inscribed within the nimbus and can be
> distinguished by contrasting color or outline. In response to an earlier
> entry in this thread I found a cross nimbus on the Christ Child of the
11th
> c. Virgin and Child mosaic in the Katholikon, Hosios Loukas, Greece.
> Obviously, this Christ is far more youthful than that shown in the Last
> Supper. There are still the questions of where and when the convention
> originated and how widely it was used.
== reply from Jim Bugslag ==
> The Cross Nimbus is a halo, reserved for "God", which has a cross
> inscribed in it behind His head (almost any medieval image of Christ
> will show you one). It seems to have developed during the 5th
> century, when debates and councils were hotly debating Trinitarian
> questions. In the mosaics of S. Maria Maggiore in Rome, dating from
> 432-40, Christ has a small cross just above his forehead within his
> halo, and in what's left of the Cotton Genesis, one of the earliest
> surviving biblical manuscripts and also dating from the 5th century,
> the Logos Creator is depicted with a cross actually extending through
> the halo so that the cross arms project slightly. By the early 6th
> century, the full conventions of the Cross Nimbus had been
> formalized. But there are many instances, it strikes me, where it is
> impossible to know whether a figure with a Cross Nimbus is God the
> Father or God the Son. Louis Reau, in his Iconographie de l'art
> chretien, claims in his New Testament volume that the Cross Nimbus is
> reserved solely for Christ, but in his Old Testament volume, he
> points out that the Sign of the Cross, in liturgical symbolism, has a
> Trinitarian significance. As he has it, one signs first on the
> forehead in honour of God the Father, then the umbilicus (super
> umbilicum) in honour of God the Son who was incarnated in the
> Virgin's belly (descendit temporaliter in ventrem Virginis), and
> finally on the shoulders, from left to right, in honour of the Holy
> Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son at the same time and
> serves as a characteristic of their union. This was graphically
> depicted in the later Middle Ages, as in the Coronation of the Virgin
> altarpiece by Enguerrand Charonton of 1454 (Musee de l'Hospice,
> Villeneuve-sur-Avignon), by depicting God the Father and God the Son
> side by side (and identical in Charonton's painting) with the dove of
> the Holy Spirit between them, the tips of its extended wings falling
> on the lips of the two persons to either side. In Charonton's
> painting, all three have Cross Nimbi, which are very exactly aligned
> and spaced, and of the same size and form, as if to emphasize the
> equality of their importances and natures. To my knowledge, however,
> the question has not been systematically investigated, and I would
> certainly be interested, as well, in further insights on this.
== reply from Leah Rutchick==
> About the child w/ cross nimbus at H.L. [Hosios Loukas??]--yes exactly
right
> about age, but I would say here we are asked to see the figure as
representing
> the divine Christ rather than the human Jesus, or rather to see both the
> human and the divine in one (collasping the present with future
> embodiment). The idea of a youthful Christ comes out of early christian
> examples, mainly or at least many from sarcophagi that show a beardless
> Jesus usually w/o a nimbus/halo in his role as teacher and miracle
worker,
> rather than the law-giver/exactor of Last Judgement theme.
>
> Thank you Jim for giving a very concise summary of early
examples
> of the cross-in-nimbus motif.
>
> As for origins of the idea of a cross or cruciform nimbus. . . well, in
> looking at a handy xerox (Paul-Albert Fevrier, Sarcophages d'Arles, Cong.
> Archeol., 1976) that happened to fall out of my filing cabinet (and which
> has been kicking around for weeks because I didn't get around to refiling
> it), there is an interesting sarcophagus (the Sarcophagus of Geminus, 5th
> c, at Saint-Trophime) with a bearded (not youthful) Christ enthroned
> between two figures identified as Peter and Paul. A cross is placed atop
> his head, with a rounded mandorla at his back. One might see this as an
> early stage in the development of a cross nimbus in the west?
> (The example of a Byz. icon or icon-like image, as at Hosios
> Loukas, needs to be considered in light of Orthodox theology--outside of
my
> area--and the development of the nimbus in that tradition.)
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