the Son the triumphal crown. Sometimes the hand is neither rayed nor nimbed, a term we shall presently explain. In a Greek fresco of comparatively recent date it is represented as elevating the souls of the just to heaven.

Thus far the honor due to the Father as the Supreme, Invisible, Eternal One, is in a manner preserved. His person does not appear. Art is reverential; it has not yet attempted to depict his features, nor represent his form. Only a hand is visible, extended to direct, and support the Son, and reach out to him the crown of life, the recompense of virtue. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Father ceased to be represented exclusively by the hand. First appeared the face reposing on a cloud, then the bust, and lastly the whole figure. The face does not at first appear in the proper lineaments of the Father, but under the features of the Son. Before the expiration of the period just referred to, artists began to introduce some change into their representations. From being identical as at first, the Father, at the close of the fourteenth century, gains in age on the Son and has specific features; his figure, too, becomes more round and portly. At one period the two appear as elder and younger brother, but finally the Father assumes the form of an old man, the Son of a man in mature life, and the Holy Spirit of a youth. This was in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, though still there was not an entire uniformity, the Son occasionally, as also the Spirit, taking the age of the Father.

Sometimes the Father appears with the imperial or kingly crown; sometimes in the habit of the Pope with the triple tiara, especially in Italy. The French disliked this, and added two crowns more, making five, one above the other, to indicate that the Father was superior to the Pope! Under the figure of the Pope the Father became a decrepit old man. At the revival of letters and arts degrading images were gradually banished; the Father assumed a more dignified and sublime form, that of a serene old man, the "Ancient of Days." Finally he came, in the farther progress of ideas, to be represented by his name only, Jehovah, in Hebrew, inscribed in a triangle surrounded with a glory.

In proceeding to speak of the representations of the Son in works of Christian art, we will begin with an observation

1846.]

The Father and the Son.

369

of Didron, that Christendom has not erected a single church specially to God, the Father, but a large number to the Son under the names of the Holy Saviour, the Holy Cross, the Holy Sepulchre, and the Resurrection. The cathedral of Aix is dedicated to the Holy Saviour, that of Orleans to the Holy Cross. The celebrated church of Florence, where repose the ashes of Dante, Michael Angelo, Machiavel and Galileo, bears the name of the Holy Cross. Churches of the Holy Sepulchre are common in France, and at Cambridge and Northampton in England are two circular churches having the same name. At Paris there is one dedicated to the Infant Jesus. Didron further remarks, in this connexion, that when preachers name the Father or the Spirit there is not the least movement on the part of the auditors, but when the Son is named you will see men bow the head and the women cross themselves. It is a singular fact, he adds, that while Newton never heard the name of God pronounced without taking off his hat, no one now thinks of uncovering his head on hearing this name, but however little religion one has, he never hears the name of Christ uttered without showing marks of profound respect. In the Apostles' Creed, it is remarked, that four words only relate to the Spirit, nine to the Father, while five entire propositions concern Jesus Christ, much the larger part of the Creed. Proofs might be multiplied, says Didron, to show that the Son has been more honored than the Father. We do not think that his reasoning is altogether sound, though a portion of his remarks are perfectly true. The fact that portraits of the Son existed earlier than portraits of the Father, does not, we should say, prove that the latter was less honored, but more, for it was their reverence for the Father, and dread of idolatry, which prevented Christians from exhibiting him under a human image. In the middle ages, however, there is certainly some ground for the charge, that the Son is exalted at the expense of the Father. When they appear together, the Son often occupies the post of honor; and when their statues are used as ornaments of churches, the Father is thrust away in corners, or placed in situations exposed to the wind and rain, while a thousand tendernesses are lavished on the Son; he has all the honors and all the triumph. The angels even are often better provided for than the Father.

The earliest portraits of the Son represent him at full length, under a beautiful form, that of a noble youth, without beard, of a winning figure, from fifteen to eighteen years of age, with long and abundant hair flowing in ringlets over his shoulders, sometimes adorned with a diadem or fillet on the forehead, as a young priest of the Pagan gods. This was long the cherished figure, affectionately caressed by art.

At what precise period portraits of the Saviour first appeared, it is impossible to say. The Gnostics painted and sculptured him in all dimensions and forms, and it is maintained that to them we owe the first portraits or statues of Jesus. Various traditions, entitled, however, to little respect, refer to Christ as having been represented by sculpture and painting from the very dawn of Christianity. The Letter ascribed to Lentulus, addressed to the Senate and People of Rome, and professing to give a minute description of his person, is without question a forgery, and there is no reason for supposing that any authentic likeness of him was preserved. Augustine asserts that in his time there was none. The earliest fathers of the Church, conformably with a passage in Isaiah (liii. 2,) believed him to have been of mean appearance. In the fourth century, however, he is represented as described above, a youth of extraordinary beauty and majesty. Didron remarks as a curious fact, that in the series of monuments, in proportion as the person of Jesus advances in age, that of the Virgin, represented as old in the catacombs, grows young. Instead of forty or fifty as at first represented, she becomes at the end of the Gothic period (the fifteenth century) not more than fifteen or twenty. In the thirteenth century they appear of the same age, about thirty or thirty-five.

The earlier artists, as appears from the figures sculptured on sarcophagi, or exhibited in fresco, or on mosaics, sought to embody in the Son their ideal of perfect humanity in the form of a beautiful youth, as the Pagans represented Apollo, and Christians painted angels. A Roman sculpture of the fourth century presents him as seated in a curule chair, as a young senator in his robe and toga, without beard, the right hand extended and open, the left holding an open volume or roll. But this is something unusual. Down to the tenth century Christ continues to

1846.]

Portraits of the Saviour.

371

be most frequently represented as a young man without beard. There are, however, during the same period many portraits of him in tombs and catacombs, and elsewhere, which present him as at the age of thirty and bearded. The latter part of the tenth century with the eleventh formed the transition period. This was a period of terror and barbarism, a hard, iron age, an age of war and violence, which would hardly content itself with the old representations of Christ as a youthful God, who healed all infirmities, solaced all miseries, and smiled benignantly on all.

rare.

The portraits of him now begin to assume a severe and inexorable aspect. The beautiful and affecting emblems and imagery suited to him in the character of the good Shepherd, so faithfully preserved in the earlier ages, disappear. In addition to the barbarism of the times there was now a general expectation of the approaching end of the world and the final judgment, and Christ becomes the austere Judge. Some of the portraits of him are terrible. Milder features are still sometimes retained in places where gentler manners prevail, but these become more and more The good Shepherd is now changed to the "King of tremendous majesty." He is now insensible to the prayers of his mother who is placed on his right hand, and of the beloved disciple, and John the Baptist, his precursor, who occupy a position on his left, and sinners have nothing to hope. Artists selected the scene of the last judgment as their usual subject. In some Byzantine frescos Christ appears seated on a throne surrounded by angels who tremble at the maledictions he pours forth upon sinners. He is not only judge, but he executes the sentence he pronounces. The words of condemnation have no sooner passed his lips, than a river of fire is seen issuing from the throne and swallowing up the guilty.

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries exhibit Christs of remarkable sadness. The "ecce homo," behold the man crucifixes, descents from the cross, Christs in the tomb, are now the reigning mode. The progression is singular. In more primitive monuments we see the cross, but not the crucified. Some crucifixes appear in the tenth century one earlier, but the crucified retains his winning and benevolent features, and is clothed in a comely robe which leaves only the extremities visible. In the eleventh

and twelfth centuries the robe is shortened and contracted, and the sleeves disappear, leaving only a sort of tunic. This becomes as short as possible in the thirteenth century; and in the fourteenth all that remains is a piece round the loins, as it now continues in the representations of Christ on the cross. At the same time the countenance bears more and more the marks of physical suffering. The contrast between these later portraits and the earlier Christs represented as triumphant, and clothed with beauty and having an expression of ineffable sweetness, is sufficiently striking, and marks the change which had come over theology, for art exhibited the reigning theological ideas. At the revival of art Michael Angelo rescued Christ from the pitiable condition in which he had been placed by preceding artists, though his piece, (the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel,) is open to severe criticism.

In the attitude and accompaniments of the figures representing Christ in works of Christian art there is every possible variety. He is now seen treading under foot the lion and the dragon, and now Death, which he holds chained; he now appears in the vestments of an archbishop, with the archiepiscopal crown on his head, and now riding triumphant among the angels on a white horse; now showing his wounds to the Father and receiving his blessing; now in the form of a lamb with the nimbus and cross, and now of a lion; now as the good Shepherd, on the older monuments, and in a multitude of other characters and positions.

The glory, or nimbus, in itself does not distinguish the Son from a multitude of other personages; and even the nimbus with the cross traversing it does not distinguish him from the Father and the Spirit. We must here explain a little, and though the remarks we are about to introduce may appear to some to be a digression, they relate to a subject, some knowledge of which is necessary to a full comprehension of works of Christian art in past ages, and of copies or engravings of them frequently met with in books, and elsewhere.

In the symbolic art, as it stands connected with Christian monuments, the glory occupies a conspicuous place. When it surrounds the head merely, M. Didron calls it a