Download The Face: Jesus in Art

The Face: Jesus in Art (2001):
Documentary Analysis
Jesus Christ is arguably one of the most pivotal individuals in all of
history. Certainly no single figure has had a greater influence on
global art and culture during the last 2000 years. For centuries, the
most important artists were painting and sculpting images of Jesus,
and their work has had an immeasurable influence on the world's
aesthetic today. [Excerpts from DVD box]
The Suffering Christ [Clip One]
 Albrecht Dürer, Man of Sorrows (1511)
 Andrea Mantegna, The Dead Christ (ca. 1500)
 Eucharist: doctrine of transubstantiation
 Raphael, library of Pope Julius II (1510s)
 Albrecht Dürer, portrait of Christ
The Beautiful Christ [Clip Two]
 Fra Angelico, Dominican frescoes, Florence (ca. 1440)
 Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper (1497-98)
 Michelangelo Buonarroti, Pietà (ca. 1500)
 Michelangelo, Christ
 Michelangelo, The Last Judgement, Sistine Chapel (1536-41)
1) Would we be able to truly appreciate & understand this artwork
without any grasp of historical context? Explain.
2) Based on these excerpts, what letter grade would you give this
documentary? Why? Specific strengths & weaknesses? Explain.
Humanist beginnings
The curtain rises on the Renaissance not amid the splendour of courts or the
colourful activity of artists' workshops, but in the quiet studies of scholars. Many
Latin authors, of course, had been neither lost nor forgotten, but they were read in
medieval (that is Christian) terms. The first achievement of the humanists . . . was,
by an effort of the imagination, to grasp the classical world in its own terms.
Appreciating the literary quality of their authors, they tried to emulate them, at the
same time purging them of textual corruption and searching out hitherto unknown
manuscripts. The second achievement was the mastery of Greek, which opened
up whole new intellectual horizons, but had initially to be translated with Latin.
[34]
Classical models & new literature
The extraordinary literary flowering of the Renaissance was the product of a
medieval tradition fertilized by the rediscovered classics. The legacy of the Middle
Ages was not immediately discarded. Dante, though long dead, was still being
read and illustrated; the old tales of chivalry were read, if only to be mocked by
Cervantes . . . Boccaccio gathered his stories from every century. Other new
forms reflected classical models--though often so distantly that they are virtually
unrecognizable. Seneca, Plautus and Terence [all ancient Romans] are the remote
ancestors of popular drama in England and Spain. The romantic epics of Tasso
and Ariosto descend ultimately from the Odyssey [ancient Greek] and the Aeneid
[ancient Roman]; humanist political satire, from Machiavelli and Aretino to More
learnt much from Lucian, as well as Latin moralists such as Cicero and Juvenal
[ancient Romans] . . . Yet what is most striking in this whole panorama of genius is
the number of its innovations; almost every literary form has Renaissance roots.
[38]
The uses of myth
Classical mythology became so familiar to educated men and women of the
Renaissance that it could be used as an allegorical language conveying meanings
not always obvious to modern eyes. [48]
The Panorama of the Renaissance (1996) edited by Margaret Aston