John Damascene, last of the Greek Fathers and a staunch defender of images, had written in De imagine ("In Defense of Images") " Of old, God the incorporeal and uncircumscribed was never depicted. This decree of Nicea II was promulgated for the entire church, both Greek and Latin speaking, and was a response to the strongly held beliefs of the iconoclasts, who wished to suppress the use of images, which had convulsed the Byzantine Empire and the eastern churches for almost 100 years. As the second Council of Nicea declared in 787 " Following the divinely inspired teaching of our holy Fathers and the tradition of the Catholic Church (for we know that this tradition comes from the Holy Spirit who dwells in her) we rightly define with full certainty and correctness that, like the figure of the precious and life-giving cross, venerable and holy images of our Lord and God and Savior, Jesus Christ, our inviolate Lady, the holy Mother of God, and the venerated angels, all the saints and the just, whether painted or made of mosaic or another suitable material, are to be exhibited in the holy churches of God, on sacred vessels and vestments, walls and panels, in houses and on streets." Since God has assumed human nature and form the Biblical prohibition against making images of God ceases to apply. Why? The answer lies in the Christian belief in the reality of the Incarnation. Uniquely among the monotheistic religions Christianity permits the use of images of God. However, others continued to use the idea ofĪ horizontal burial, infused with greater archaeological knowledge, due to excavations in the Holy Land. Images produced in the last half of the nineteenth century show a return to theĮarliest image of the grave as vertical, although now Lazarus emerges, not from a classical aediculum, but from a more biblically correct rock cut tomb. Leon Joseph Florentin Bonnat, Raising of Lazarus Paris, Ëcole nationale superieure des Beaux-Arts Others pointed the way toward a more naturalistic and/or a moreĬharles Francois Sellier, Raising of Lazarus Some shared in the simplified approach to design and storytelling that was emerging in England and Germany in groups like the Pre-Raphaelites and the Nazarenes. Some very divergent images, some of them still wedded to the light/darkĬontrasts so common since Caravaggio. Subject set for entrants in the French Academy’s competition, the Prix de Rome, Rembrandt, Raising of Lazaaarus (Small Plate)Ĭenter of Five Panels of the Life of Christ Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art Only the hands of Lazarus can be seen reaching up from the tomb. In this highly dramatic painting Lievens focuses our attention through light onto the huge white shroud being pulled from the grave by an assistant, on Jesus and on the faces of Martha and a man kneeling next to her. Jerusalem or Christian Armenia, and the Greek Byzantine artists continued to Lazarus as a horizontal sarcophagus, a hole in the ground or a cryptĪnd in other countries near the Mediterranean, such as the Latin Kingdom of Workshop of Pacino di Bonaguida, Raising of Lazarusįrom Scenes from Life of Christ and the Life of Blessed Gerard of VillamagnaĬentury on the artists of northwestern Europe universally depicted the grave of Ivory Diptych with Scenes from the Life and Passion of Christ Paris, Mus é e de Cluny, Mus é e national du Moyen Age Ivory Panel with Scenes from the Life and Passion of Christ Matthew Paris, Raising of Lazarus and Woman Washing the Feet of Jesus Raising of Lazarus and Entry into Jerusalemįrom the Psalter of St. To come, that of Jesus and of all of us at the end of time. Lazarus raised is a token of the greater Resurrections This earthly bodily life, but through Jesus, to an eternal one (John 11:25-26). Promise that, "I am the resurrection and the life whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die" so that, in God’s time, we will also be raised from the dead, not just to Renewed earthly life, but to a bodily life that is outside the bounds of spaceįorthcoming resurrection through Baptism of those preparing for it, as well asĪ reminder to the already baptized of their own Baptism into Christ’s death and Manifestation of the power of God the Father who raises Jesus, not just to a Jesus, which is to be celebrated in two weeks, and which is the supreme Person of the Holy Trinity, over life and death. Year, 1is a manifestation of the power of Jesus, as God, the Second The raising of Lazarus, read as the Gospel for the Fifth Sunday of Lent in
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