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At 07.11 21/10/97, you wrote:


>If this is a reasonable assumption (correct me if it isn't),  it would be
>interesting to see two things.  (A) a list of all works of art attributed to
>Luke, (B) citations of all texts that mention his being an artist.  I don't
>know what the correlations would be, but might raise interesting questions.
>If no paintings were attributed to Luke before a certain date, would that
>indicate that the legend of his being an artist developed at about that date?

This is exactly what I have tried to see. However, the idea of a complete
list of all the images attributed to him is nearly impossible, since
attribution is often due to different causes and is not unanimously
accepted. Nonetheless, I can try to summarize here the main problems which
the topic arouses.
The first mention of St. Luke as a painter appears in an alleged 5th century
text by Theodorus Anagnostes, in a passage which has been long considered as
spurious. Apart from it, the most ancient source to mention this legend is a
passage by the bishop Andrew of Crete, where the Evangelist is remembered as
the initiator of the Christian practice of painting icons. Note that no
specific icon is attributed to Luke in this and subsequent Iconodulic
sources who utilize the legend as a means to justify the cult of images. I
think that the story could circulate also before the Iconoclastic
controversy, but no doubt its fuller formalization occurred in that period,
since it was perceived as a good argument to oppose Constantine V's
theologians. One may wonder why Luke was identified as the first Christian
painter, but I think that was due to his description of the historian's
purposes (as said in the prologue of his Gospel) as those of a scrupolous
researcher of sources, in particular of eyewitnesses. Such role of
eyewitness was attributed to Luke himself and his artistic production was
paralleled with his literary works: earlier Iconodulic sources (among
others, the patriarch Germanus and the three Eastern patriarchs) mention the
first icon painted by Luke as a gift to Theophilus,  the dedicatee of the
Gospel and the Acts.
Luke's artistic practice was consecrated by the institution of the Feast of
Orthodoxy in 843; in fact, in such a solemnity, Luke was solemnly remembered
as the first Christian painter. Moreover, such a role was recorded in the
10th century by menologia, as the one by Symeon Metaphrastes. However,
nothing seems to corroborate the idea that in that moment an icon by St.
Luke was actually the object of public veneration somewhere in the Christian
world. The first mentions of the existence of single images definitely
attributed to St. Luke appear in the 11th century in connection to the icon
of the monastery of the Hodigon in COnstantinople. This one was already
visited as a sanctuary in the second half of the 9th century, because of a
miraculous spring said to cure the blind. The emergence of this place as an
important place in the Christian topography of Constantinople occurred in
great part when it was involved in the symbolic system of the Imperial
Court. The icon of the Virgin Hodigitria first appeared as a substitute of
the spring as the main cultual focus of the sanctuary and inherited its
proper oracular virtues, what attracted the Emperor's attention. In the 11th
through the 15th century the Hodigitria began a real palladium of
Constantinople and the Empire, involved in hebdomadary public ceremonies and
commonly called 'patron' (poliouchos). I suspect that the attribution to
Luke was a means to define the icon's prominent role as an imperial symbol.
On the other side, one must remember that the Hodegon monastery was
subjected to the patriarch of Antioch, the homeland of the Evangelist, and
this may be the first origin of the attribution of the Hodigitria to his
hands; anyway, its imperial involvement provided the major stimula to
simulate it in a great number of copies. If you analyze the distribution of
icons attributed to St. Luke, you find that everyone emerged in great and
powerful centers, both in the East and the West. While Armenians and
Georgians created alternative legends (speaking of icons attributed to St.
John and St. Andrew), Luke's icons began widespread throughout the Eastern
lands and in Italy. Here the monopoly of Luke's icons was exerted for nearly
three centuries by Rome, where the first images to be attributed to him were
the Lateran Christ (already venerated as an image not made by human hands)
and the Virgin of San Sisto Vecchio (already the object of a public cult).
Diffused by pilgrims, the knowledge of the miraculous icons by the
Evangelist's hand was diffused throughout Italy and also north of the Alps;
copies started to be honored in the major churches outside Rome and someone
was thereafter perceived as an original painting by St. Luke. The question
is too long to expose here now, but I can tell you that the Italian centers
where Luke's icons appeared in the 13th through the the 16th century were
all important commercial and politic centers on the main communication
roads: Spoleto, Firenze, Bologna, Padua, Venezia, Udine, Loreto (connected
to the seaside town of Ancona), Fermo, etc. 
This multiplication of the Evangelist's icons was due to the the desire of
reproducing Roman and Byzantine devotional custums. After the Tridentine
Council, however, when the Roman Church was forced to formulate a definite
doctrine on the question of the cult of images, St. Luke was pointed out as
an ideal model for Catholic painters. New attribution to the Evangelist were
accepted, but the story rather constituted a topos in the fashioning of new
cults, a way of 'Romanizing' locally rooted cult phaenomena.
My apologies for my rather incorrect English; I hope this help.

Michele Bacci
Scuola Normale Superiore
Pisa (Italy)



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