medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear all, especially art historians,
I have a question regarding religious iconography. It's my understanding
that, generally speaking, cruciform halos (i.e., a halo with three bars
emanating from the person's head at 12:00, 3:00, and 9:00, thus forming,
along with the person's torso, a cross) are usually reserved for the
persons of the Trinity.
My question is: how invariant are such conventions? In other words, if a
cruciform halo is generally a marker of the divine, how probable is it that
there could be local variants that might place this feature on human
saints? I know that certain halo conventions are very loose --- for
example, technically "blesseds" should be shown with rays emanating from
the head, rather than with the closed circle of the halo, but this
convention is widely ignored. Is the cruciform halo a similarly "loose"
marker, that cannot be strictly associated with the Trinity?
I ask because I recently came across an image with a puzzling use of this
iconographic element. There are three figures with cruciform halos arranged
side-by-side. The central one is bearded and looks like Christ; to his left
is a figure that looks like a young man (beardless); and to Christ's right
is a figure that looks like a woman (clear hourglass figure with a breast
curve, as distinct from the other two). They are all of similar size,
frontal aspect, calm expression; each holds an identical chalice in his/her
left hand, and has the right hand raised in a blessing gesture. I am not an
art historian, so my opinion on dating is crude, but my best guess would be
14C-.
My best guess is that the young man and the woman are meant to be the BVM
and John, who I recall is often shown beardless... but why show them in
this way, with such clear trinitarian implications? Or am I over-reading
the significance of the cruciform halo and other parallelisms?
--Nancy Caciola
History, UC-San Diego
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