In a message dated 97-10-26 04:17:14 EST, you write:
> If Luke were an artist, and I cannot comment here;
> I'm not an art historian in any way, shape or form, who else would be
worth
> painting at the time? Saints, as we know them today can't have existed and
> therefore it would surely be unwise to theorise that the ultimate aim of
> art was to depict Christ based on works attributed to Saint Luke.
>
If you go back to the posts that reported paintings attributed to Luke, they
were not made at the time the NT was begin written down (which would have
corresponded to Luke's lifetime), and came from a much later period (when
saints would have existed).
I don't think we have much Christian art earlier than c. AD 300. Either none
was being made that early or it wasn't preserved. BTW, anyone have a date
for the first elevation to sainthood of a non-Biblical person?
Also, don't forget there seems to be no documentary or evidentiary basis, nor
even a Biblical basis, for assuming that Luke actually was an artist. We
only know that people long after his death said this was the case, and even
conjectured that he might have made certain paintings. These people weren't
art historians either, and I don't think they'd have gotten into questions
like whether a painting of, say, 5th century vintage could really have been
made by Luke.
pat sloane
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