medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
I think this is what the Russian Icons depict as the Old Testament Trinity,
from the three visitors to Abraham before the destruction of Sodom &
Gomorrah. God visits Abraham in this guise.
Tom Izbicki
At 09:44 AM 3/10/2001 -0800, you wrote:
>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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