>pat sloane
>I had the impression that Luke was either a physician or an artist, whcih is
>probably why he's considered a patron of these occupations. Rogier van der
>Weyden's Saint Luke Painting the Virgin exists in several copies and shows
>him as an artist with a small sketchpad.
On Luke the physician see Col 4.14.
>He's also the only Gentile Evangelist, and his perspective might be different
>in a few small ways. In Gospel accounts of the Baptism, he's the only one
>who says the Holy Spirit descended in the bodily form of a dove. The others
>only say it descended in the manner of a dove, which leaves a greater
>ambiguity about its "bodily form" (or if it had one). I thought they might
>have meant to honor the Old Testament strictures against images of God by not
>attributing a "bodily form" to the Holy Spirit. I'm relying on the KJV, so
>anyone interested ought to check the Greek text to see if the wording is
>comparable.
The wording of the Greek is indeed comparable.
>In painting, of course, the Holy Spirit came to be represented as a dove,
>because you can't portray a simile ("in the manner of a dove") unless you
>literalize it.
Exactly.
>Or the artists could have taken their cue from Luke.
Or, perhaps, Luke was the first visualizer ("painter") of that scene.
Ulrich Schmid,
Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies
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