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37
CHAPTER ONE
he Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai
Introduction: Journey to Sinai
Situated among the mountains of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt,
St. Catherines Monastery is the oldest, continuously inhabited
Christian monastery in the world. Hermits and ascetics established
settlements here as early as the third century, and the site soon
became an impor-tant center of pilgrimage, for it was here that God
had spoken to Moses from the burning bush (Ex 3:2).1
he monastery was also the home of St. John Klimakos, who served
as abbot in the early seventh century. His famous work, the Ladder
of Divine Ascent, is a classic of Christian spiritual writing, and
is read aloud in Orthodox monasteries every year during Lent. Also
popular in the West, the Ladder was the irst book published in the
New World, thanks to the eforts of Juan de la Madalena, who typeset
the work in Spanish on a printing press, sent to Mexico by Charles
V in 1535.2
Between 548 and 565, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I ordered
the building on the site of a large basilica church, along with a
series of massive fortiications, which stand to this day. he walls
enclosing the monastery reach up to sixty feet high, and in some
places are more than
1 he site was visited in December 383, by Egeria, a wealthy nun
from the western Medi-terranean, who notes that it was situated ubi
plurima monasteria et ecclesia (SC 296:142). Ar-cheologists have
conirmed that the monastery was indeed the focal point of a large
network of monastic communities and settlements, with the total
number of surrounding sites reaching into the hundreds; cf. I.
Finkelstein, Byzantine Monastic Remains in Southern Sinai, DOP 39
(1985): 3975; and U. Dahari, Monastic Settlements in South Sinai in
the Byzantine Period. he Archeological Remains ( Jerusalem,
2000).
2 According to G. Couilleau, Jean Climaque, Dictionnaire de
spiritualit, vol. 8A (Paris, 1972), 369389; and W. Lowries, A Short
Life of Kierkegaard (Princeton, 1942), 167.
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38
The Art Of Seeing
ten feet thick.3 he basilica, which has an unusual series of ten
side-chapels, is one of the most important to have survived from
the sixth century. Justinians church was originally dedicated to
the Burning Bush, understood as a type of the Virgin, whose womb
was not con-sumed by the ire of divinity. At some point during the
tenth century, the monastery was re-dedicated to St. Catherine,
ater acquiring the relics of the great Alexandrian martyr.4
Among its many justiiable claims to fame, the monastery houses
the worlds second largest collection of Byzantine manuscripts, with
three thousand codices, surpassed only by the manuscript
collections of the Vatican Library.5 What is perhaps the most
famous manuscript, the Codex Sinaiticus, also igures in the
monasterys most famous thet, perpetrated in 1859 by the German
biblical scholar Constantine Tisch-endorf. he Codex, which dates to
the fourth century, is one of the ear-liest and best textual
witnesses for many of the books of the Old and New Testaments.
Tischendorf gave the codex to Tsar Alexander II, and it later
passed into the hands of the Soviets, who sold it in 1933 to the
British Government. It is currently in the British Library.
In addition, the monastery also houses the worlds largest and
most important collection of icons, more than two thousand in
number, dat-ing from every period of Christian history. Four of the
most ancient icons were removed from the monastery by archimandrite
(later arch-bishop) Porphyry Ouspensky (18041878) and taken to
Kiev. hese icons pre-date the outbreak of the Iconoclast
controversy in 726, as does the icon of Christ that is the focus of
this chapter. he total num-ber of surviving, pre-Iconoclasm icons
is extremely limited (around twenty-ive), and nearly all of them
have been preserved at Sinai, be-yond the reach of the Byzantine
emperor and his icon-smashing agents.
Modern study of these icons began only in the 1950s, when the
Hel-lenic Archeological Society conducted a number of surveys under
the
3 See the studies by Forsyth, who conducted the irst modern
architectural survey and analysis: G.H. Forsyth, he Monastery of
Saint Catherine at Mt. Sinai: he Church and For-tress of Justinian,
DOP 22 (1968): 319; and G.H. Forsyth and K. Weitzmann, he Monastery
of Saint Catherine at Mt. Sinai: he Church and Fortress of
Justinian (Ann Arbor, 1973). See also I. Demakopoulos, , 9.4
(19771979): 261301, who updates some of Forsyths work in the course
of commenting on the efects of the 1971 ire that damaged the
northeastern wall and attached structures.
4 he date is disputed, and estimates range from the 9th to the
11th centuries.5 In 19491950, a large number of the Sinai
manuscripts were microilmed with the help
of the United States Library of Congress.
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39
The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai
direction of George Soteriou (1881-1965), professor of Early
Christian and Byzantine Art at the University of Athens, and
founding director of the Byzantine Museum. Soteriou had initially
been invited to St. Cath-erines in the 1930s, and subsequently
published studies on individual icons in 1939, 1947, 1950, and
1953, culminating in a major two-volume work published jointly with
his wife, Maria (d. 1979), in 19561958.6
Shortly aterwards, Princeton scholar Kurt Weitzmann (19041993)
began what would be a long and fruitful association with the
monastery, including a series of four campaigns (1958, 1960, 1963,
and 1965) conducted jointly by the Universities of Alexandria,
Michigan, and Princeton. During the second campaign, Weitzmann
studied and photographed thousands of illuminated manuscripts and
icons, and supervised the restoration of the monasterys celebrated,
sixth-century apse mosaic of the Transiguration of Christ. Before
the pioneering work of Soteriou and Weitzmann, the Sinai icons were
largely un-known, and their discovery and publication greatly
advanced our understanding of Byzantine art and the civilization
that produced it.
However, such a vast and unprecedented project, involving
inter-nationally recognized scholars, high-ranking members of the
clergy, along with their respective academic, ecclesiastical, and
government bureaucracies, was bound for trouble. In October of
1960, not long af-ter the start of the second expedition, Professor
George Forsyths ar-cheological work on the basilica was called to a
halt, in fear that the winter rains would lood the now exposed
foundations. At the same time, diferences of opinion regarding the
cleaning and restoration of the pre-Iconoclasm icons escalated into
a minor international afair.
Acting on questionable reports from a faction of scholars, the
monasterys liaison to the project, Father Gregorios (who would
later become abbot), quarreled with Weitzmann and ordered a stop to
the restoration work. he Egyptian authorities were called in, and
it was eventually agreed to bring the matter before a plenary
session of the forthcoming Twelth International Congress of
Byzantine Studies, scheduled to meet in Ohrid, Yugoslavia, in
September of 1961. At the conclusion of the plenary, a committee
was formed to assess the situa-tion and drat a series of
recommendations. On the following day, the
6 For full references, see the bibliographies published in XAE 4
(19641965): , and in G. Konidaris, ed., 1400 (Athens, 1971),
548549. Ma-ria Soteriou published similar studies in 1960, 1961,
and 1969; cf. XAE 9 (19771979): -.
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40
The Art Of Seeing
committee members (i.e., Andr Grabar, David Talbot Rice, Otto
De-mus, Manolis Chatzidakis, and Ernst Hawkins) presented their
report. hey unanimously agreed that the work of cleaning the icons
should continue, without however repainting any missing parts, and
insist-ed that such work be undertaken only by qualiied experts
under the supervision of responsible scholars. he latter clause was
suiciently ambiguous as to allow all parties to feel vindicated,
and Weitzmann was allowed to resume his work.7
Ater the conclusion of the Alexandria-Michigan-Princeton
proj-ect, work on the icons continued intermittently. his was
partly due to the monasterys remote location, the ongoing
reluctance of the monks to expose the icons to possible damage and
thet, and various political events such as the Arab-Israeli
conlicts of 19671974, during which time the Sinai Peninsula was a
theater of war.
Important advances in the study of the Sinai icons were made in
the late 1990s, when the monastery loaned nine icons to a major
exhibition of Byzantine art that took place at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York City (he Glory of Byzantium, 11 March6
July 1997).8 Four years later, the same number of icons was loaned
to the Church of Greece for an exhibition mounted at the Byzantine
and Christian Mu-seum in Athens (28 May31 July 2001). In
celebration of the millenni-um, the exhibitions centerpiece was the
sixth-century icon of Christ that is the focus of this chapter, and
this is the only time in its long his-tory that the icon has ever
let the monastery.9 At the same time, a group of ten Sinai icons
igured in the exhibition, Sinai, Byzantium, Russia, mounted
initially at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (
JuneSeptember, 2000), and then at Londons Courtauld Gallery
(October 2000February 2001).10 Collaboration between St. Catherines
and the Metropolitan Museum continued with the loan of more than
forty icons to the exhibition Byzantium: Faith and Power (23 March4
July
7 See the account, including a dossier of letters and other
documents, published by Gre-gorios, Archbishop of Sinai, ,, in
Konidaris, ed., , 457-496.
8 H.C. Evans and W.D. Wixom, eds., he Glory of Byzantium: Art
and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era A.D. 8431261 (New York,
1997). Partially remounted as he Glory of Byzantium at Sinai [ ]
(Athens, 1997).
9 . Kypraiou, ed., . 2000. ( , 28 31 2001) (Athens, 2002),
188189.
10 Y. Piatnitsky, ed., Sinai, Byzantium, and Russia (Sinai and
Saint Petersburg, 2000).
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41
The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai
2004).11 More recently, a group of Sinai icons was the focus of
an exhi-bition at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles,
California (Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai, 14
November4 March 2007).12 Finally, as this book was nearing
completion, icons from Sinai were traveling to London for a major
exhibition of Byzantine art at the Royal Academy (25 October 200822
March 2009).13
In the half-century since the pioneering work of Soteriou and
Weitzmann, scholarship on the Sinai icons has made signiicant
prog-ress, especially in the last ten years, during which these
icons have been featured in major exhibitions at some of the worlds
leading museums. Such exhibitions, oten held in conjunction with
academic conferenc-es and symposia, serve the needs of the
scholarly community and at the same time bring the Sinai icons to
the attention of a large public audi-ence. Even though some of
these exhibitions have been largely com-mercial enterprises, we
should be encouraged by the increasing sensitiv-ityespecially
evident at the Getty exhibitionto the icons function and
signiicance in the liturgical life of the Orthodox Church and in
the devotional life of the faithful.
Part One: Description and Analysis
As mentioned above, the Sinai Christ, which most scholars date
to the irst half of the sixth century, belongs to a very small
group of panel icons that has survived or otherwise predates
Iconoclasm (726843). It will therefore be instructive to consider
the fate of another sixth-century image, a marble relief icon of
Christ from the church of St. Polyeuktos in Constantinople [ig. 1].
he carving was defaced by the Iconoclasts, and subsequently placed
in a substructure beneath the church. During the Fourth Crusade
(1204), the church was pillaged and fell into ruin. Buried
somewhere beneath modern-day Istanbul, the church was considered
lost for ever, until it was discovered by chance
11 H.C. Evans, ed., Byzantium: Faith and Power (12611577), (New
York, 2004). Partially remounted as Pilgrimage to Sinai: Treasures
rom the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine [ : ] (Athens, 2004). he
Sinai icons exhibited in New York in 1997 and 2004 subsequently
traveled to Athens, where they were placed on display at the Benaki
Museum.
12 R.S. Nelson and K.M. Collins, eds., Holy Image, Hallowed
Ground: Icons rom Sinai (Los Angeles, 2006).
13 R. Cormack and M. Vassilaki, eds., Byzantium 3301453 (London,
2008).
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42
The Art Of Seeing
in 1960, at which time the icon of Christ, and nine other panels
like it, all similarly defaced, were unearthed.14 he Sinai Christ
was spared a similar fate, in part because of its remote location,
but also because the world had changed: from about 640, St.
Catherines had been residing in what had become Islamic
territory.
he Sinai Christ is thus a remnant from a shattered artistic
tradi-tion, a survivor from a government campaign to purge the
state of sa-cred images. Like most survivors, it has an important
and fascinating story to tell. As a work of art, the Sinai Christ
is surely one of the last great achievements of Byzantine panel
painting before the outbreak of Iconoclasm, quintessentially what
an icon was at the time the crisis erupted. Let us begin, then, by
attending closely to its archeological and artistic features.15
Description
he icon [ig. 2] is 84.5 cm in height, and 44.3 cm at the top and
43.8 cm at the bottom in width. It is painted on a thin wooden
board of 1-2 cm in thickness ( 1 cm at the top and bottom, 2 cm
toward the sides). he icon is impressive for its sheer size, but
was originally slightly taller and wider, before it was later
trimmed at the top and along both sides. It is, therefore, not
unlikely that the icon was intend-ed for display in the basilica,
the walls of which, apart from the icono-graphic program of the
apse, are bare.
Unlike later Byzantine icons, which are painted in tempera, the
Sinai Christ was painted in encaustic, a medium in which colored
pig-ments are suspended in heated beeswax. he visual and aesthetic
efects of encaustic, which are diicult to capture in a photograph,
produce a
14 See C. Mango and I. evenko, Remains of the Church of Saint
Polyeuktos at Con-stantinople, DOP 15 (1961): 243247; and R. M.
Harrison, Excavations at Saraane in Istanbul, vol. 1 (Princeton,
1986).
15 he following technical information, and parts of the
subsequent description and anal-ysis, are indebted to the work of
G. Soteriou, (Athens, 1958), 125126; M. Chatzidakis, An Encaustic
Icon of Christ at Sinai, Art Bulletin 49 (1967): 197208; re-printed
in id., Studies in Byzantine Art and Archaeology (London, 1972),
XVII; K. Weitzmann, he Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai:
he Icons, 1: From the Sixth to the Tenth Cen-tury (Princeton,
1976), 1315; G. Galavaris, , in : , ed. C. Manais (Athens, 1990),
91-101; and J.C. Anderson, he Byz-antine Panel Portrait before and
ater Iconoclasm, in he Sacred Image East and West, eds. R.
Ousterhout and L. Brubaker (Urbana, 1995), 2544.
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43
The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai
warm, luminous transparency, along with a sot, smooth texture
not unlike the appearance of human lesh.16
Christ is depicted in bust form, frontally disposed, and
blessing the beholder with his right hand. In his let hand, he
holds a large Gospel book, its binding ornamented with pearls and
precious stones forming a cross and right-angles.17 He wears a
purple-violet mantle (himation) that envelops his arms up to the
wrists, revealing underneath a small part of a tunic (chiton) of
the same color, but ornamented with a verti-cal stripe (clavus) of
lighter color and heightened with inely engraved gold lines of
which only a few traces remain.18
A sense of space is created by the curved, architectural
backdrop (recognizable as a hemicycle), whose ornamental windows
terminate in a cornice, each surmounted by a golden volute.19
Flanked by the pro-jected piers of this structure, Christ stands
before an open space that recedes behind him in perspective.
However, the precise relationship between the igure and the
architectural frame is somewhat ambigu-ous. From one point of view,
Christ stands prominently in the fore-ground, face to face with the
viewer. At the same time, he occupies a three-dimensional position
in space, the depth of which is opened up in a distinctly
illusionist fashion by the distant architecture depicted in half
tones. Obviously the efect of foregrounding is meant to dominate,
but it is efectively challenged by the spatial setting, which
creates a subtle though inescapable sense of ambiguity.
he elusive setting is intensiied by the indeinite sense of time,
primarily through the treatment of the graded background, painted
with a blue grey-green in two tones, with the darker tone at the
horizon line, in a schematic rendering of atmospheric perspective.
In the upper
16 In the 19th or perhaps the 18th century, the icon was heavily
over-painted, which sub-sequently led to the mistaken notion that
it was originally a work of the 13th century. In 1962, the icon was
cleaned and the later layers of paint were removed.
17 he symbolism of these forms, known as gammadia, is debated;
they bear comparison with the gammadia on the altar cloths depicted
in Ravenna, also of the 6th century, and are found on Roman burial
clothing.
18 he clavus was originally an indication of senatorial rank.
Usually purple or gold, clavi were woven into the tunic in pairs in
such a way as to be visible even when the tunic was cov-ered by an
outer mantle.
19 A hemicycle is a rounded recess, oten a group of columns
arranged in a semi-circular formation. Anderson notes that
hemicycles continued to be built during the late-antique pe-riod,
so that Christ appears here in a contemporary setting, as if in the
middle of a forum. he volute is a spiral ornament found on
capitals, oten twisted, scrolled, or whorled; cf. Anderson,
Byzantine Panel Portrait, 29.
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44
The Art Of Seeing
corners appear two eight-pointed stars, shining paradoxically in
the day, and thus reminiscent of the star of Bethlehem (Mt 2:9). In
the numero-logical symbolism of the early Church, the eighth day
was the day of the Resurrection, which transcended the seven days
of the cosmic week, and pointed like a lodestar to the end of time.
hus the hour depicted in our icon may be the dawn, which is one of
the names of the Messiah (cf. Num 24:17; Lk 1:78; 2 Pet 1:19; Rev
2:28), who in the book of Rev-elation calls himself the bright
morning star (Rev 22:16).20
he face of Christ, framed by thick, dark hair, is intensiied by
con-trast with the large, cruciform nimbus, the bars of which are
delineated in a gold color slightly darker than the golden ground
of the nimbus (although this is rarely visible in photographs). he
nimbus is deco-rated with a border of small, stamped rosettes, a
device which has par-allels in several other encaustic icons at
Sinai, as does the thick, dark, grey-blue line that runs around its
circumference.21
Christ Pantokrator
To the modern viewer, the Sinai Christ, with his long hair and
beard, may appear to be a rather conventional depiction of the
Savior, but this was not quite the case in the sixth century. To
complicate the picture still further, the origins and historical
development of this par-ticular type of Christ are not very well
understood, due to the lack of surviving evidence. here are,
however, parallel images on contempo-rary coins, and these have
igured prominently in eforts to locate the Sinai Christ in a larger
iconographic context.
As has been pointed out by several scholars, the iconographic
type of the Sinai Christ occurs on a gold solidus of Justinian II
(685695) [ig. 3], and, earlier, on a silver cross of Justin II
(567578)both ob-jects being produced before the outbreak of
Iconoclasm. he same type appears on the coins of Michael III
(842867), following the conclu-sion of the Iconoclast controversy
in 843 [ig. 4]. It therefore seems likely that the iconographic
type in question had been adopted as a
20 See below, n. 111.21 Compare Weitzmann, he Monastery of Saint
Catherine, nos. 45. On either side of
the nimbus, there are faint traces of an inscription (in
cinnabar lettering) that reads: () (), i.e., Jesus Christ the
Philanthropos (Lover of Mankind). his is probably of later date, as
are the cinnabar lines and small cruciform motifs of the cross
inscribed within the nimbus.
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45
The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai
kind of emblem by the imperial court in Constantinople, perhaps
mod-eled on a well-known image in the capital, such as that of
Christ Chal-kites, which adorned the principal entrance to the
imperial palace (the so-called Chalke Gate).22
In what has been called a revolution in Byzantine coinage,
Justin-ian II was the irst Roman emperor to place the image of
Christ on his coins. his dramatic change of policy, although not
easy to interpret, suggests that a profound spiritual change, a
shit in imperial self-deini-tion, took possession of some of the
rulers of the late sixth and seventh centuries.23 Historians have
tried to explain this new situation in light of the social and
political upheavals that toppled the Justinianic order: foreign
invasions, attacks on the capital, the rise of Islam, permanent
territorial losses, a decline in literacy and cultural life, and
the prolif-eration of divisive theological controversies.24
As a result of these events, the Byzantine emperor was no longer
the de facto master of the oikoumene, and so the symbolic focus of
po-litical power was shited away from the earthly ruler and placed
on a level where it was not subject to the vagaries of politics and
history. And this seems clear even from the coins inscriptions:
Justinian II is now identiied as the servus Christi, whereas Christ
is the Rex regnan-tium, a title which, among other things, sounds a
note of eschatological expectation: hey will make war on the Lamb,
and the Lamb will con-quer them, for He is the Lord of lords and
King of kings (Rev 17:14; cf. 1 Tim 6:15).
he evidence provided by late-antique coins has played a
promi-nent role in the study of the Sinai icon, and has led at
least one scholar
22 See Weitzmann, he Monastery of Saint Catherine, 13; J.D.
Breckenridge, Christ on the Lyre-Backed hrone, DOP 34-35
(1980-1981): 254255; id., he Numismatic Iconography of Justinian II
(685695, 705711 A.D.) (New York, 1959), 4662; and P. Grierson,
Byzantine Coins (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1982), 9798, 175176.
23 On the revolution in coinage, see E. Kitzinger, he Cult of
Images in the Age before Iconoclasm, DOP 8 (1954): 127; and
Grierson, Byzantine Coins, 27. he notion of a profound spiritual
change is set forth by A. Grabar, LEmpereur dans lart byzantine
(Paris, 1936), 163164; cf. id. LIconoclasme byzantin (Paris, 1998),
4650.
24 During this period, the Persians overran Syria, Palestine,
and Egypt, and repeatedly in-vaded Asia Minor; the Arabs conquered
the irst three of these provinces and North Africa as well; the
Slavs occupied most of the Balkan Peninsula. he Visigoths
reconquered the small Byzantine foothold in Spain, and the Lombards
much of Byzantine Italy. hese disasters in-volved the loss of
two-thirds of what in 565 (the date of Justinians death) had still
been impe-rial territory, with far-reaching efects on every level
of society, cf. J. Haldon, Byzantium in the Seventh Century: he
Transformation of a Culture (Cambridge, 1990).
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46
The Art Of Seeing
to date the panel to around 700, thereby making it contemporary
with the coins of Justinian II.25 Such a dating also aligns the
icon with the eighty-second canon of the Penthekte Synod, convoked
by the same emperor and convened in his palace (691692). his canon
prescribed that Christ be depicted in human form and not
symbolically as a lamb. While we cannot be certain regarding the
speciic type of hu-man form the canon had in view,26 it is
ultimately of little importance: the type that in fact prevailed
shared a common archetype with both the coin type of Justinian II
and the Sinai Christ. Not only had this type become an emblem of
the empire, but it was also the type of Christ with the widest
geographical distribution. In addition, it had the ad-vantage of
corresponding to the celebrated image of Christ not made by hands,
which had been miraculously derived directly from Christs face
during his sojourn on earth.27
It seems, then, that in an age of political catastrophe, social
decline, and religious anxiety, the sacriicial lamb was no longer
deemed an ap-propriate symbol of imperial self-expression. What was
needed was a powerful, adult Christ, whom later ages would call the
Pantokrator, that is, All-Sovereign. No longer subject to time,
still less a victim of the times, this Christ promised to appear at
the end of time to judge the world (cf. Rev 19:15).28
Of course, the evidence provided by coins is subject to
multiple
25 E. Kitzinger, Byzantine Art in the Making (Cambridge, 1977),
120, with the qualiica-tion that the iconography is a reversion to
a Justinianic ideal of lifelike monumentality.
26 Grabar, LIconoclasme byzantin, 48-49, argues that the human
form envisioned by the canon was that of the youthful Christ, with
a triangular face with short curly hair and beard, which appears on
a second series of coins issued by Justinian II. Grierson,
Byzantine Coins, 98, however, relates the canon to the mature type
of Christ (with a long face and dark, lowing hair), and suggests
that the issue of the new coin type is scarcely likely to have been
a consequence of the promulgation of the canon, as some scholars
have supposed; more probably it was the striking of the coin that
caused discussion of the matter and led to the formulation of the
canon.
27 On which, see the remarks of G. Dagron, Holy Image and
Likeness, DOP 45 (1991): 2333, 2830.
28 Art historians continue to debate the genealogy of the
Pantokrator type, some seeing it as inspired by the iconography of
ancient philosophers, from which it deviates by the incor-poration
of long hair; cf. P. Zanker, he Mask of Socrates: he Image of the
Intellectual in Antiq-uity (Berkeley, 1995), 297307. Others argue
for a mythological source (e.g., Zeus, Asklepios), but apart from
the beard, there is not much to associate the iconography of Christ
with that of the gods. Even so, the artistic line between Christ
and Zeus was not always clear, and re-mained a sensitive issue: cf.
John of Damascus, Defense of Sacred Images 3.130 (Kotter, 3:196);
John of Jerusalem, On the Holy Icons (PG 95:313C); and Ignatius the
Deacon, Life of Patriarch Tarasios, 5455 (ed. S. Ethymiadis
[Ashgate, 1998], 144146).
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47
The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai
and at times conlicting interpretations. One thing, however,
seems sure: the close connection of the Sinai Christ to the
iconography of the imperial coins, along with its exceptional
artistic quality, leaves little doubt that our icon was produced in
Constantinople. But when? As-signing the icon a date coincident
with the reign of Justinian II is cer-tainly attractive, not least
for its theoretical elegance. However, the iconographic type in
question was so widespread by the end of the sixth century that it
seems mistaken to group the Sinai Christ with coins and canonical
prescriptions issued a century later.
It seems best, then, to hold to the earlier date and concur with
the opinion that the icon was brought to Sinai at the time of its
construc-tion under Justinian I. Alternatively, it could have been
painted in situ by one of the Constantinopolitan artists who
decorated the basilica in the mid-sixth century, a supposition that
inds some support in the par-allels between the apse mosaic and the
icon, which we shall consider below. In either case, there are no
real grounds for doubting the Con-stantinopolitan provenance of our
icon, which is both a masterful de-piction of the central igure of
the Christian faith, and a powerful sym-bol of Justinians
empire.29
The Aesthetics of Ambiguity
Let us now resume our examination of the Sinai Pantokrator, this
time paying particular attention to the depiction of the face and
eyes, since it was on these that ancient portrait painters lavished
all their talent.30
Christs face is luminous, mostly ivory in tone, and in general
cor-
29 he 6th-century Moses cross, designed especially for the
monastery, but most likely made in Syria or Palestine, indicates
that lavish gits were being brought to Sinai from other parts of
the empire as well. he cross, which is without parallel, is
inscribed with two Moses scenes (both of which also igure in the
monasterys apse mosaic), along with an inscription from Ex 19:1618.
With an upright bar of 1.04 m, it may have originally been a ixture
in the main church (in the vicinity of our icon?), perhaps on the
top of the chancel screen. But even though the igures are of high
quality, they do not compare with the artistic level of the Sinai
Christ, as do none of the early icons said to be of
Syro-Palestinian origin, see K. Weitzmann and I. evenko, he Moses
Cross at Sinai, DOP 17 (1963): 385398.
30 hus Plutarch, Life of Alexander the Great 1.1: Just as
painters get the likenesses in their portraits from the face and
the expression of the eyes, wherein the character shows itself, but
make very little account of the other parts of the body, so I must
be permitted to devote myself rather to the signs of the soul in
men, and by means of these to portray the life of each (LCL
7:224).
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The Art Of Seeing
rectly and coherently lighted, creating the impression of a
single light source somewhere above and to the right (perhaps in
the late ater-noon) [ig. 5]. he play of light creates an illusion
of volume, as in the deep shadow thrown on the side of the neck, or
in the shadow the nose casts on the cheek, and in the deep crease
at the top fold of the eyelid.
On Christs right cheek (which is on our let), the shadows are
greenish-grey (the same as the under-painting on the chin, which is
perhaps easier to see). he let cheek, however, has a trace of
purple-violet added to the grey to mark the transition from light
to shade. he same purple-violet (which photographs closer to a
sienna) is used to indicate the shadows of the upper eyelids, the
let side of the nose, and the nostril, while on the right side, the
greenish grey tones are used both around the eye and on the let
side of the nose.
he features of the face are not outlined, but built up by the
juxta-position of dark and light brush strokes. he modeling of the
forehead is executed with white highlights, along with small white
lines around the eyes, hatched in with a ine brush. he lips are
modeled with nu-ances of a pale, cherry-purple color. he mustache
and beard, in shades of chestnut, are rendered in a painterly
manner, and the treatment of the hair, when compared to the
rendering of the face, is somewhat cur-sory and schematic. he
hands, which are slightly darker than the face, are also treated in
summary fashion. To be sure, hands, garments, book, and
architecture are executed with considerable mastery, but not with
the same care or attention as the face.31 he result is a magnetic
portrait in which dynamic expressionand the viewers attentionis
concen-trated intensely in the face and eyes.
Upon closer inspection, however, things are not quite what they
seem. Although the head of Christ is centered within the frame of
the panel, the features of his face are disposed in a distinctly
asymmetrical manner. he long nose, for example, is not in the
middle of the face, but
31 he hands, in particular, are markedly diferent from the rest
of the igure, for which they appear too small, and of a much more
ruddy hue than the face. In an unpublished paper delivered in
Athens in 1998, Tasos Margaritov suggested that these hands belong
in fact to an earlier image of Christ, whose face was later painted
over (with the face we currently see). his is an intriguing
suggestion, although Margaritov undermined his case when he
suggested that the over-painting was done, not in the 6th-century
by a Byzantine painter, but in the 16th cen-tury by El Greco. To
date, the icon has not been tested with x-rays to determine if
there are earlier levels of painting under the present surface. I
am thankful to Fr. Justin of St. Catherines Monastery for this
information.
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49
The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai
in the middle of the part of the face that is illuminated. he
shaded part of Christs let cheek is more or less incorporated into
the width of the let side of his face. One might think that by such
a displacement of the central axis the artist intended to indicate
a slight turn of the igure to the right. However, the inner corner
of the let eye is precisely as far from the root of the nose as the
inner corner of the right eye, as if the face were rigidly
frontal.
If the face gives the impression of being represented
frontallywithout being so in factthe body reinforces the sensation
that Christ is turned to his right, both by the level of his
sloping shoulders, and by the movement and folds of his garments.
he right shoulder is partial-ly uncovered, while the let is not, so
that the torso is on an angle not only to the picture plane, but
also to the orientation of the head.
Within the face of this ambiguous igure, the two large eyes
difer in terms of shape, size, and activity. he right pupil, turned
up toward the top of the eye, is higher than the let pupil, which
is ixed directly in the center of the iris. Each pupil, moreover,
is in a slightly diferent state of dilation/constriction. Under
normal physiological conditions, when light is shone into one eye
alone, the pupils of both eyes constrict. In the case of the Sinai
Christ, however, the eyes appear to be respond-ing independently of
each other, as if one were in the light and the other in relative
darkness.
he eyes themselves are not placed on the same level, and,
through strong diferences in the movement of the eyebrows, each eye
acquires a rather diferent expression. he right eyebrow is
relatively relaxed, lattened on its lower side, and thickens into a
gentle, rounded curve over the center of the eye. he let eyebrow,
on the other hand, is fur-rowed and twisted, like a troubled braid,
knotted together in opposing angles, and dramatically raised in a
pointed arch. he raised arch, more-over, creates a space beneath it
for a series of vigorous white highlights that are not found on the
right. he right eye, which is smaller, radiates tranquility, but
the energy introduced by the contorted let eye, like a gathering
storm, threatens the balance, and efectively disrupts the per-fect
symmetry, giving to the otherwise handsome, regular face a
dis-turbing sense of tension and disquiet.
One seeks in vain for elements of formal unity between one side
of the face and the other. As already mentioned, the let cheek
employs a diferent color scheme in the modeling of the large, dark
shadow,
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The Art Of Seeing
which gives it an angularity that deviates from its counterpart.
he mouth and lips are also asymmetrical. he well-deined cupids bow
of the upper lip inclines slightly to the let, and whereas the
right naso-labial fold of the philtrum is visible, the let fold is
obscured by the mus-tache. he lips and mouth are turned down on the
let hand side, being abruptly halted by the elongated (let)
mustache, whose row of sharply angled hatchings (down to the edge
of the lip) contrasts with the smooth, elongated lines of the
right.
In sum, the two sides of Christs face are marked by signiicant
dif-ferences of color, contrasts of light and shade, variations in
size and shape, and the handling of the brush and application of
the heated wax. It is to the expressive and symbolic values of
these diferences that we may now turn.
Changing Sides
If we cover irst one side of the face, and then the other,
thereby viewing each half in isolation, the diferences between the
two sides become immediately apparent and indeed are quite
striking. When we reverse the image [ig. 6], so that the let-hand
side now appears on our right, the contrast is brought plainly into
view. he distortion of the (original) let-hand side now seems
overwhelming, and mars the entire depiction.
his dramatic change in our perception of the image is due to a
neuro-physiological phenomenon known as cerebral lateralization, a
feature of the brains split structure. As is well known, the human
brain is physically and functionally divided into two lateral
hemispheres, so that the let hemisphere controls the right half of
the body and vice versa. Hemispheric lateralization, moreover,
accounts for certain abili-ties being controlled more by the let
hemisphere and others by the right hemisphere. In most people, for
example, control of speech is in the let hemisphere, whereas the
right controls spatial perception. hus when we look at another
person, our vision is drawn to the right side of that persons face
(which is on our let), because the right hemisphere of the brain
(which receives visual input from the let visual ield) is
responsible for deciphering and interpreting facial expressions
and
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51
The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai
moods.32 When the icon is viewed in its normal state, our vision
is drawn to the right side of Christs face (which is on our let),
while the disigured, let-hand side recedes from view, being kept in
check by the brains right hemisphere, which insures an
aesthetically pleasant view-ing experience.
Having uncovered this striking diference, we may pursue our
in-quiry still further. If we take each half of the face and
duplicate it, so that each half forms a mirror image of itself, we
can generate two im-ages that are astonishing in their diferences
[igs. 7-8].33 Before us now is a Janus-like igure at once meek and
majestic, diminutive and daunt-ing, oscillating between the
extremes of vulnerability and power. On the one hand, we are
presented with a timid, slightly sad-looking young man, who
hesitantly turns to us in a gesture of prayer or petition. He seems
poised to bless and perhaps even to touch us. With his hands gently
raised before his heart, he appears poignantly, almost
patheti-cally, human in his unspoken yearning for contact and love.
And yet, absorbed in his prayer, his eyes are turned inward, so
that he looks, not at us, but at God. His dark counterpart, on the
other hand, is a ponder-ous Titan, aloof to all relation. Solemn
and impassive, he is self-con-tained in the closed circle formed by
the armor of his authoritative volumes, themselves suggestive of
ominous secrets and threatening revelations.
he contrast between these two igures could hardly be more
pro-nounced. Were we not aware of their common source, it would be
dif-icult to believe that they are but fragments of a larger whole,
painted by the same artist, indeed the elements of a single face.
Were sixth-cen-tury icon painters capable of such conscious
stylistic equivocation? hat is what we shall consider in the
remainder of this section.
32 For discussion, see J. Hellige, Hemispheric Activity: Whats
Right and Whats Let (Cam-bridge, 1993); and J. Jaynes, he Origin of
Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston,
1976), 117121.
33 Byzantine iconographers may have used mirrors to design and
achieve certain efects of lattening and distortion, as suggested by
B. Uspensky, he Semiotics of the Russian Icon, trans. P.A. Reed
(Lisse, 1976); cf. David Hockney, Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering
the Lost Tech-niques of the Old Masters (New York, 2006), 228229,
238. his practice, moreover, may have been encouraged by the use of
mirrors (and other relective surfaces) in mystical and visionary
experience, cf. L. Jacobs, Jewish Mystical Testimonies (New York,
1976).
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Form and Content
In a groundbreaking study, Kurt Weitzmann demonstrated that
Byzantine artists employed diferent styles or modes in order to
ex-press diferent realities or states of being.34 Classical
elements, for ex-ample, oten occur alongside non-classical or even
anti-classical ele-ments, so that the two modes seem to be
purposely chosen for contrast. An example of this technique,
involving two separate pictorial units, occurs in an illustrated
herbal of Dioskorides, commissioned by Anicia Juliana, a distant
cousin of the Emperor Justinian. In this manuscript, which is
exactly contemporary with the Sinai Christ, a naturalistic,
classicizing style is used to depict the ancient botanist, whereas
an ab-stract, ornamental style is used for the igure of the
aristocratic donor. Both images were made by the same painter,
whose artistic aim was to contrast the past with the present, the
classical with the imperial.35
he use of contrasting modes also occurs within the same
pictorial unit, and it is signiicant that Weitzmann inds a prime
example of this technique precisely in the apse mosaic from Sinai.
Here, contrasting styles are used to express, not diferences of
past and present, but rath-er diferent degrees of corporeality in
the igures of Moses and Christ. For example, Moses feet are planted
irmly on the ground, and his body, which is slightly turned, stands
in classical contrapposto, giving it a high degree of physical
reality. he loose leg in particular creates an efect of
three-dimensionality and motion in space [ig. 9].36 hese marks of
corporeality are efectively contrasted with the relative
imma-teriality of the body of Christ, achieved through strict
frontality and the suspension of the igure in space independently
of any ground line
34 K. Weitzmann, he Classical in Byzantine Art as a Mode of
Individual Expression, in Byzantine Art: An European Art (Athens,
1966), 151-177.
35 Ibid., 154155; cf. Kitzinger, Byzantine Art in the Making,
19, who notes that on the 3rd-century Attic sarcophagus in the
Capitoline Museum in Rome, two diferent styles ap-pear side by side
on one and the same monument, one for contemporary mortal men, the
other for igures from mythology. his is the phenomenon of the
so-called modes - the con-ventional use of diferent stylistic
manners to denote diferent kinds of subject matter or dif-ferent
levels of existence. Similarly, in a 7th-century Sinai icon of the
Virgin, Kitzinger sees an outstanding example of an artist
modulating his style within one and the same context to suit
diferent subjects, to set of from one another diferent orders of
being and to express dif-ferent functions (p. 118)
36 Weitzmann, he Classical in Byzantine Art, 165, notes that
these are traditional sculp-tural values, readily paralleled in
ancient statues of philosophers, poets, and orators.
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53
The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai
[ig. 10]. he folds of Christs garments, moreover, are a system
of straight lines, and any illusion of corporeality they may have
created is diminished both by the absence of shading and the
extensive use of white and gold, which tend to latten the body.
Weitzmann observes that, in the Sinai apse mosaic, classical
corporeality and Christian ab-stractionism are no doubt used
purposely in order to distinguish be-tween the human and the
divine.37
Byzantine artists also used contrasting modes to visualize
emotion-al expressions, a psychological element that is most
readily observed in the depiction of the human face. Once again, a
striking example of this technique occurs in the Sinai apse mosaic.
Here the impassive, rigidly frontal face of Christ contrasts with
the highly expressive face of the Prophet Elijah, which is turned
in three-quarter pose with a deep, purple shadow falling on the
hair, itself an instance of ancient illusionism. In-fused with deep
emotion, the prophets face is expressive of awe, or per-haps worry,
achieved by steep contracted brows and obliquely set eyes [ig. 11].
hese elements constitute the classical formula for the depiction of
pathos, and Weitzmann suggests that the face of Elijah is
ultimately descended from a tragic mask of antiquity. he face of
Christ, on the other hand, is devoid of emotion, a quality
consistent with the demate-rialization of the body. His wide-open
eyes, arched eyebrows, bell-shaped hair, and slightly parted beard
are arranged in strict symmetry approaching an almost geometrical
clarity [ig. 12]. he overall efect of this pronounced emphasis on
abstraction is to remove the igure of Christ from the realm of
human qualities, so that he is neither the se-vere judge nor the
benevolent savior of later Byzantine art.38
Sixth-century artists, then, were indeed capable of employing
con-trasting styles both in separate pictorial units and side by
side in a single composition. In the case of the latter, as
exempliied in the Sinai apse mosaic, the artists aim, according to
Weitzmann, was to contrast human and divine characteristics.
Weitzmann took the matter no fur-ther, but on the basis of his
indings one may reasonably argue that Byzantine artists could also
make use of diferent styles, not simply in the same composition,
but in the same igure, indeed in the same face. hus I believe that
the artist of the Sinai icon employed two diferent
37 Ibid., 164165.38 Ibid., 170173.
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The Art Of Seeing
styles in order to express two contrasting qualities within the
one per-son of Christ.39
Obviously, in the depiction of a single face, stylistic
diferences can-not be overly pronounced, or else the image will
fail as an artistic unity: it will not be a successful portrait.
here is no question, however, that the right and let sides of
Christs face are set apart by strong modal con-trasts. When each
side is isolated and used to form two separate faces [igs. 7-8],
the contrasting modes emerge into plain view, and we are confronted
with two divergent portrait types: a naturalistic image of a frail
young man, and a colossal, almost non-human igure rendered in a
style that is comparatively abstract, hieratic, and symbolic.
here is no doubt that the Sinai Christ gives expression to a
strong duality, and that this was quite deliberate on the part of
the artist, who successfully integrated two contrasting styles into
a single, uniied por-trait. But what exactly are the two terms at
issue? What qualities or aspects of the depicted igure do the
contrasting styles aim to express? Do they, as Weitzmanns work
suggests, denote the realities of human-ity and divinity? his is
what we shall seek to answer in the remainder of this chapter.
Part Two: heological Interpretation
As every artist knows, the best way to impress an image on the
mind is to subject it to the play of strangeness, marring its
aspect through discoloration, distortions, asymmetries, and other
incongru-ous visual marks. By distorting the basic elements of
form, the hege-mony of natural representation is broken, opening up
the image to the play of symbolic associations. In its ability to
arrest the eye and impress itself upon the mind, the image becomes
a locus of contemplation, a
39 According to Kitzinger, Byzantine Art in the Making, 24, all
early Byzantine art is marked precisely by the coexistence of
diverse and contrasting styles, along with extraordinary attempts
at synthesis, at reconciling aesthetic views. E. Auerbach, Mimesis:
he Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. W.R.
Trask (Princeton, 1953), 72, had earlier advanced the same claims
regarding early Christian literature, which had likewise overthrown
the distinc-tion of styles: the age of separate realms of style is
over hat the King of Kings was treated as a low criminal, that he
was mocked, spat upon, whipped, and nailed to the cross - that
story no sooner comes to dominate the consciousness of the people
then it completely destroys the aesthetics of the separation of the
styles.
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The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai
privileged place for layered networks of meaning, a sonorous
seed that opens toward the branching tree of signiications.40
Our analysis of the visual data indicates that the Sinai Christ
has been built up by a series of such distortions, so that the
viewers percep-tion is encroached upon by an almost subliminal but
nevertheless per-vasive feeling of ambiguity. As described above,
the igure of Christ stands in ambiguous relation to the surrounding
space, and at an equal-ly ambiguous moment of time: is it dawn, a
starry night, or some mo-ment in between? Although Christ appears
to be standing quite still, he is nonetheless in the midst of a
majestic turn, like a planetary revolu-tion, both vast and
imperceptible. Moreover, the odd angles of his body and sloping
shoulders make it diicult for us to take his precise physical
measure. hese artistic devices give the icon tremendous animation
and vitality, enabling the igure of Christ to break free from the
conines of the picture plane and advance toward the viewer. hey
also create a compelling framework for the contrasting halves of
his face.
hrough his large eyes, the Sinai Christ exerts a mesmerizing
pow-er over the viewer. Caught within his gaze, our vision is
naturally (and thus inexorably) drawn to the right side of his
face. here, however, our bliss of repose is disturbed by something
stirring in the shadows, a con-trary force skirting the edges of
our vision, concealed within a realm beyond perception.
Looking at the Sinai Christ, we are face to face with the visual
equivalent of the textual stumbling block that so fascinated
ancient ex-egetes, for whom obscure and contradictory surfaces
concealed lumi-nous depths of meaning.41 Such surfaces demand a new
way of looking, a new mode of attention and awareness, and thus
mark a point of ana-gogic departure. But to what end? What, to
restate our original ques-tion, is the higher or deeper meaning
hidden behind the troubled sur-face of the Sinai Christ?
The Doctrine of Christs Two Natures
Perhaps the most obvious response, and the one given by many
modern interpreters, is to see in our icon a visual expression of
Christs
40 In the words of the Romanian philosopher Mihai Sora, On
Poetic Meaning: A Song for Two Violins, cited in D. Staniloae,
Revelation through Acts, Words, and Images, in id., heology and the
Church, trans. R. Barringer (Crestwood, 1980), 149.
41 See the introduction to this volume.
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The Art Of Seeing
two natures: divinity and humanity. his was one of the most
impor-tant dualities articulated by the early Church, culminating
in the Fourth Ecumenical Council (also known as the Council of
Chalcedon) in 451, which proclaimed that Christ was both fully God
and fully man.
To assess the matter properly, however, we need to consider some
of the iner points of patristic Christology, and thus our focus
will now shit away from the icon to the theological context in
which it was pro-duced. In particular, we shall look at the
development of Christological thought from the period preceding the
hird Ecumenical Council (Ephesus, 431), down through the Fith
Ecumenical Council, convened in Constantinople by Justinian in 553.
he latter provides us with a critical terminus, since it coincides
precisely with the place where, and the time when, the Sinai Christ
was painted.
Perhaps the best point of entry into the sacred grove of
patristic Christology (which in places runs to a thicket) is a key
passage from the writings of St. Gregory the heologian. his
important text will serve to familiarize us with a number of
critical themes that will be of use to us throughout our
discussion. Foremost among them is a particular habit of mind, a
method of approaching, relecting on, and expressing in language,
the duality in Christ.
St. Gregory the Theologian
We begin our Christological study, then, with the heological
Ora-tions of St. Gregory the heologian. Delivered before a small
audience in a private chapel in Constantinople in the late summer
of 380, these ive discourses exerted far-reaching inluence on
theological thinking in both the East and the West.42 Recognized as
milestones in the his-tory of Trinitarian theology, the Orations
also contain a highly devel-oped Christology that anticipated the
doctrine of Chalcedon.
In the hird heological Oration, Gregory responds to a question
that remained under discussion through the sixth century and
beyond: How are we to understand the diferent and oten
contradictory char-
42 In the Byzantine world, the Orations are extant in as many as
1,500 manuscripts; cf. J. Mossay, Vers une dition critique de
Grgoire de Nazianze, Revue dhistoire ecclsiastique 74 (1979): 629.
A Latin translation became available to Saint Augustine around
418419, on the basis of which he revised portions of his On the
Trinity; cf. P. Courcelle, Late Latin Writers and their Greek
Sources, trans. H.E. Wedeck (Cambridge, 1969), 202204.
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The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai
acteristics that Scripture ascribes to the person of Christ? To
ascribe, for instance, both divinity and mortality to the same
subject seems logically impossible and theologically blasphemous:
can the immortal God be said to sufer and die? Gregory refers to
this contradiction as a stumbling block contained within the
literal text of Scripture.43 He believes, however, that it may be
readily cleared away by means of a simple principle:
You must predicate the more sublime expressions of the Godhead,
of the nature that transcends bodily experiences, and the lowlier
ones of the compound, of Him who because of you was emptied [cf.
Phil 2:7], became incarnate, and became man.44
According to Gregory, the surface contradiction is in fact a
con-trast between two diferent forms of speech, two diferent sets
of attri-butes that give voice to the mystery of the Incarnation.
One form is appropriate to the Godhead, and the other to the
reality of the God-head compounded with human nature in the
incarnate Christ. Where others see opposition and contradiction,
Gregory sees diverse modes of representation, expressing diferences
in the revelation and appre-hension of the incarnate Word of
God.
Moreover, when taken together, these contrasting attributes
contain a self-correcting dialectic: If the irst set of expressions
starts you going astray, the second set takes your error away.45 he
productive tension between the two sets of attributes indicates
that the mystery of the living Christ cannot be grasped solely
within a one-dimensional perspective, for it does not rest on a
single plane. he vision of faith must therefore encompass apparent
contradictions; it must confess the paradoxical. Gregory admits
that such talk appears illogical to his opponents, but for him it
is the basic mode through which truth can be discovered, because it
preserves the mystery without resolving it rationalistically.46
Gregorys teaching concerning the twofold character of both
Christ and Scripture was not simply a reaction to the theological
needs of the
43 Gregory the heologian, Oration 29.18 (SC 250:216); cf. id.,
Or. 41.7 (SC 358:330).44 Id., Oration 29.18 (SC 250:216). Gregorys
principle, which is cited by John of Damas-
cus, On the Orthodox Faith 3.4 (Kotter, 2:117), is derived from
Athanasios of Alexandria; cf. Letter to Serapion 2.8 (PG 26:620D);
id., Against the Arians 2.12; 3.41 (PG 26:172; 409D); and id., On
Dionysios 9 (PG 25:492BC).
45 Gregory the heologian, Oration 29.20 (SC 250:222).46 Ibid.,
29.21 (SC 250:224).
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moment, neither was it a facile pasting-over of literary seams
in sacred letters. It was both an authentic expression of the
experience of Christ, and an accurate representation of the witness
of the New Testament, which itself presents Christ as both
authoritative God and sufering man.47 We are therefore not
surprised at Gregorys widespread and lasting inluence over the
subsequent theological tradition: ater the Bible, he is the most
frequently cited author in all patristic and Byzan-tine
literature.48
In the Christology of Gregory the heologian, with its emphasis
on duality and paradox, we seem to have found a itting theological
framework for the Sinai Christ. Gregorys ability to discern deeper
meaning beneath the crosscurrents of a seemingly conlicted surface
resonates closely with the visual complexities of our icon.
Gregorys two modes of predication, moreover, provide us with a
striking analogue to the two artistic styles that were employed in
the icons design. Given Gregorys unquestioned authority in the
Byzantine world, it would be highly unlikely for iconographers and
their patrons to have escaped his inluence. Indeed by the mid-sixth
century, when the Sinai Christ was painted, Gregorys inluence was
so pervasive that excerpts from his Orations had been redacted by
hymnologists and were being chanted in churches throughout the
empire.49
The Council of Chalcedon
In the period between the delivery of the heological Orations
and the painting of the Sinai icon, the question of Christs two
natures con-tinued to be intensely debated, and provoked a series
of major church
47 For a study of this phenomenon in the Gospel of Mark, see D.
Trakatellis, Authority and Passion (Brookline, 1987). he author
argues (p. 139), moreover, that it was the experience of Christs
dual nature that ultimately determined Marks selection and
organization of his mate-rial. C.K. Barrett, he Dialectical heology
of St. John, in id., New Testament Essays (London, 1972), 54, airms
the same for the Gospel of John, the antinomies of which (i.e.,
life and death, truth and error, light and darkness, lesh and
spirit, sight and blindness, love and hate) are grounded in the
early Churchs theological understanding of the experience of
Christ.
48 J. Noret, Grgoire de Nazianze, lauteur le plus cit, aprs le
Bible, dans la littrature ecclsiastique byzantine, in II Symposium
Nazianzenum Louvain-la-Neuve, 2528 aot, ed. J Mossay (Paderborn,
1983), 259266.
49 References in N. Constas, Gregory Nazianzus and a Byzantine
Epigram on the Resur-rection by Manuel Philes, in Rightly Teaching
the Word of Your Truth. Studies in Honor of Archbishop Iakovos
(Brookline, 1995), 253271.
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The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai
councils.50 Ater protracted controversy, the discussion came to
a head and received classic deinition at the Fourth Ecumenical
Council (Chalcedon, 451), which articulated a duality of natures in
the unity of the one hypostasis (or person) of Christ. he Councils
Deinition of Faith proclaimed that Jesus Christ was one and the
same Son, who was both perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood,
and thus had a double consubstantiality, being both one-in-essence
with God (in terms of his divinity), and one-in-essence with us (in
terms of his hu-manity). In a key formulation, the Council airmed
that the two na-tures were truly united but nonetheless remained
distinct, so that Christ is known in two natures without confusion,
change, division, or sepa-rationand note the word known here, to
which we shall return shortly. Consequently, the characteristics of
each nature were not com-promised but preserved in full: the union
in no way abolished the distinction in the natures, but rather
preserved the characteristic prop-erty of each.51
he Councils airmation of two natures, however, did not meet with
universal approval, and gave rise to a Monophysite party, which
held that Christ consisted of only one nature, in which the human
element had been more or less absorbed by the divinity. he
Mono-physites had capable spokesmen, grew quickly in strength, and
became irmly established in Egypt and Syria. A long struggle
ensued, and be-came particularly intense during the reign of
Justinian, who ardently defended the Chalcedonian dogma, ultimately
at an Ecumenical Coun-cil that he convened in 553.
It was precisely in the midst of this crowded moment that an
out-standing artist, in all probability associated with the
Justinianic court, painted the icon of Christ now at St. Catherines
monastery. Given the urgency of the emperors theological agenda and
the theological nature of icons in general, it does not seem
unreasonable to suggest that the Sinai Christ was intended as a
visual statement of the doctrine of two natures.
his at least is the view of many scholars, who hold that the
icono-graphic type in question (i.e., Christ Pantokrator) was
developed in the context of the Trinitarian and Christological
controversies, and
50 On which, see J. Meyendorf, Christ in Eastern Christian
Tradition (Crestwood, 1975), chaps. 15; and id., Byzantine heology
(Crestwood, 1974), chaps. 12.
51 ACO 2, I, 2, 129130; cf. R. Price and M. Gaddis, trans., he
Acts of the Council of Chal-cedon, vol. 2 (Liverpool, 2007),
202-205.
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The Art Of Seeing
intended to serve as an illustration of Orthodox theology. In
response to questions about the person of Christ, this particular
image is said to place special emphasis on Christs divine nature,
that is, on his status as God. his, it is claimed, is partly
evidenced by the use of the epithet Pantokrator, which is
predicated of God the Father in the irst line of the Nicene Creed.
From this point of view, the Pantokrator type elides the features
of Christ the incarnate Son with those of God the Father, who some
historians believe is looking down on us from the domes of
Byzantine churches. Others claim to see in our icon the direct
inluence of the Christology of the Council of Chalcedon.52
The Art of Chalcedon
Such a thesis at irst glance seems perfectly logical, and inds
sup-port in a number of contemporary sources. We know, for example,
that
52 See, for example, Galavaris, , 93: By means of the unfocused
gaze, the artist gives expression to Christs divine nature, whereas
the naturalistic features, such as the raised eyebrows, refer to
the human nature of his theandric person. he Christ Pantokrator of
Sinai is depicted as the God-man, in accord with the dogma of
Chalcedon; and id., he Il-lustrations of the Prefaces in Byzantine
Gospels (Vienna, 1979), 91: Byzantine art, essentially dogmatic in
character, is concerned here (i.e., in the iconography of Christ
Pantokrator) with the dogma of the two natures of Christ as
formulated in the Council of Chalcedon. his doc-trine, so
predominant in the East, had already been most forcefully expressed
in the celebrated Sinai mosaic. Similar views are advanced by E.M.
Jones, he Pantokrator: A Study of the Iconography, Eastern Churches
Quarterly 9 (1951/1952): 266272; H. Hommel, Schpfer und Erhalter
(Berlin, 1956); O. Montevecchi, Pantokrator, in Studi in onore di
A. Calderini-R. Paribeni (Milan, 1957), 2.401-432; Breckenridge,
Numismatic Iconography, 5962; C. Capizzi, Pantokrator: Saggio
desagesi lettarario-iconograico (Rome, 1964); Weitzmann, he
Classical in Byzantine Art; K. Wessel, Das Bild des Pantocrator, in
Polychronion: Festschrit fr Franz Dlger zum 75. Geburtstag, ed., P.
Wirth (Heidelberg, 1966), 521535; Grabar, LEmpereur dans lart
byzantine, 120; F. Buri, Der Pantokrator: Ontologie und
Eschatologie als Grundlage der Lehre von Gott (Hamburg, 1969); C.P.
Charalampidis, A propos de la signiication trinitaire de la main
gauche du Pantokrator, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 38 (1972):
260265; D.L. Holland, Pantocrator in New Testament and Creed,
Studia Evangelica 6 (1973): 256261; J. Timken Mathews, he
Pantocrator: Title and Image (Ph.D. dissertation, New York
Univer-sity, 1976); ead., he Byzantine Use of the Title
Pantocrator, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 44 (1978): 442462; A.
De Halleux, Dieu le Pre toutpuissant, Revue thologique de Louvain 8
(1977): 401422; F. Bergamelli, Sula storia del termine pantokrator:
dagli inizi ino a Teo-ilo di Antiochia, Salesianum 46 (1984):
439452; I. Stouphe-Poulemenou, - . - , 57.4 (1986): 793854; N.
Gkioles, - (Athens, 1990), 55, 65, 7073; Galavaris, , , , , in
Ky-praiou, 3942; and most recently, D. Kalomoirakis, Icon with
Christ Pantokrator, in Egeria: Mediterranean Medieval Places of
Pilgrimage (Athens, 2008), 236: On the let part of His face somehow
the human face of Christ is depicted while on the right the divine
one.
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The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai
the defenders of Chalcedon made use of icons in their debates
with the Monophysites, a tactic advocated by Anastasios of Sinai, a
monk and possibly abbot of St. Catherines, who later became
patriarch of An-tioch (599609). Anastasios believed that visual
images were stronger than words or passages in books, because,
unlike the latter, they could not be falsiied or otherwise altered
by heretics. It was therefore much more efective to advert to
actual types and images of Christ (in this case, an icon of the
Cruciixion), in order to demonstrate visually that it was the
physical body of Christ that had sufered and died on the cross, and
not his divine nature, which was not subject to passion. For
Anastasios, the icon of the Cruciixion was an irrefutable
demonstra-tion of the Chalcedonian doctrine of Christs two
natures.53
In the following century, the defenders of Chalcedon ventured
even further, for they undertook, not simply to argue on the basis
of existing icons, but to create new images that forcefully
illustrated the doctrine of the two natures. he most striking
example of such an at-tempt is extant in the church of Panagia
Drosiani on the island of Naxos [ig. 13].54 In the central dome,
the igure of Christ appears twice: once as a mature man with a full
beard, and again as a relative youth.55 It has been argued that
this painting was designed and executed under the direction of the
pro-Chalcedonian Pope Martin I (a staunch colleague of St. Maximos
the Confessor), who was exiled to Naxos in 653, where he spent more
than a year, most likely in the immediate vicinity of Dro-siani,
the islands administrative center.56 Such daring double
depic-tions, however, were not to prevail. Whatever its merits, an
icon con-taining two diferent images of Christ fails to account for
Chalcedons emphasis on the unity of person, and could readily be
seen, not merely as distinguishing between the two natures, but as
dividing Christ into
53 Anastasios of Sinai, Hodegos 12.1 (CCSG 8:201202).54 Cf. .
Drandakis, (Athens,
1988),5156; and Gkioles, , 6985.55 On the two types, see above,
nn. 2628.56 See . Gkioles,
, 4.20 (1999): 6570, for the evidence concerning the popes
exile. Alternately, and on the basis of epigraphic evidence,
Professor Haralambos Pennas suggests that the church may have been
built and decorated during the reign of Justinian II (685695;
705711). He argues that the double Pantokrator corresponds to the
emperors use of both im-ages of Christ on the coins published
during his two reigns, with the Pantokrator type appear-ing during
his irst reign, and that of the youthful Christ during the second
(personal corre-spondence, 20 December, 2012).
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two separate persons or hypostases. Such an image may also have
been confusing in the context of public devotion, which was one of
the prin-cipal arenas in which the controversy was fought.
Double images of Christ were consequently rejected in favor of
more subtle compositions, such as the seventh-century panel icon of
Christ Pantokrator preserved at Sinai, but probably produced in
Pal-estine [ig. 14]. Here, rather than separate the contrasting
characteris-tics of divinity and humanity, the two are conlated and
combined. In this instance, the contrast is primarily between
eternal existence and birth within time. hus, an aged, white-haired
Christ (i.e., the Ancient of Days from Dan 7:9), is inscribed as
Emmanuel (cf. Mt 1:23), a type which calls for a youthful Christ.
By a combination of images and epi-thets, this unusual,
seventh-century icon, in a certain sense, gives ex-pression to the
meaning hidden behind the face of its sixth-century
counterpart.57
Altogether we seem to be confronted with signiicant evidence for
the production of theological art by proponents of the two natures
theology, which lends support to the Chalcedonian interpretation of
the Sinai Christ. Not least among this evidence is the prominent
dual-ity of the icon itself, which seems an ingenious depiction of
two con-trasting natures united in a single prosopon. However, such
an interpre-tation will not stand up to sustained scrutiny. Like
Pope Martins dou-ble Christ, it fails in the irst place to account
suiciently for Chalce-dons emphasis on unity. Second, it directly
conlicts with theological tendencies prevalent in mid-sixth-century
Constantinople, i.e., the time and place where the Sinai Christ was
actually painted. In order to un-derstand these tendencies better,
we need to take a closer look at the theology of Justinian and his
defense of the Council of Chalcedon.
Justinian and the Defense of Chalcedon
he Chalcedonian Deinition of Faith was a calculated efort to
rule out two Christological extremes: (1) a radical division of
Christ into two persons, and (2) a reductive truncation of Christ
into one nature. With respect to the former, the Councils repeated
emphasis on the existence of one and the same Son (a phrase it
reiterates eight
57 Cf. Weitzmann, he Monastery of St Catherine at Mount Sinai,
16; Gkioles, , 7677; and Galavaris, , 93.
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The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai
times in one short paragraph) was a response to the Nestorians,
who believed that the Savior was in fact a conjunction of two
diferent sons: the Son of God and the son of Mary, as if the former
had merely inhab-ited the soul of a certain man named Jesus. To
divide Christ like this, however, was to separate humanity from the
source of divine life and grace, and the Council rejected the
notion that Christ consisted of two separate persons, understood as
two independently functioning centers of consciousness and
activity.
At the same time, the Council held irmly to the belief that in
Christ there were two distinct natures (divinity and humanity), and
that these remained whole, complete, and unimpaired despite their
union with each other. Here the Councils aim was to rule out the
notion that Christ consisted of only one nature, in which the human
principle had been suppressed by, absorbed into, or otherwise
confused with the divinity (a view promoted by the archimandrite
Eutyches and his followers, later called Monophysites). hus, of the
four adverbs used by the Council to characterize the union of the
two natures, the irst two (without confu-sion or change) were
directed against the Monophysites, and the latter (without division
or separation) against the Nestorians. he goal was to avoid both
division and fusion with equal care.
Defeated and condemned, the Nestorians established a separate
church outside the eastern borders of the empire (in Persia, India,
Cen-tral Asia, and China), where they were of relatively less
trouble to the church of Constantinople, and more or less forgotten
by the govern-ment. However, within major centers of the empire
(Alexandria and Antioch), strong Monophysite communities emerged
which rejected the doctrine of two natures, claiming that any talk
of duality in Christ was tainted with Nestorianism. hey
consequently condemned the Council of Chalcedon as heretical and
stubbornly adhered to the one nature formula, which they had taken
out of context from the writings of St. Cyril of Alexandria.
During the reign of Justinian, the presence of Monophysite
com-munities in Egypt and Syria seriously threatened the empires
physical and spiritual integrity and received the emperors full
attention.58 Trans-
58 On which see E.R. Hardy, he Egyptian Policy of Justinian, DOP
22 (1968): 2341; J. Meyendorf, Justinian, the Empire, and the
Church, DOP 22 (1968): 4560; and S.P. Brock, he Conversations with
the Syrian Orthodox under Justinian, 532, Orientalia Chris-tiana
Periodica 47 (1985): 107109.
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The Art Of Seeing
forming his palace into a center of theological activity,
Justinian pro-nounced on matters of doctrine, authored (or signed)
a number of theological works, sponsored theological dialogues, and
convoked the Fith Ecumenical Council.
Although Justinians policy towards the Monophysites evolved over
time, there were certain aspects of it that remained invariable.
His aim was to reairm the condemnation of Nestorianism and reassure
the moderate Monophysites that they had nothing to fear from
Chalce-don. In so doing, he hoped to isolate the more radical
Monophysite factions, and thus secure general ecclesiastical unity.
Justinians eforts to restore unity took many forms, although the
central challenge re-mained the same: to maintain the doctrine of
two natures without di-viding the one Christ into two.
Known in Two Natures
A solution was found within the very terminology of the
Chalce-donian formula, which asserted that Christ is known in two
natures. his was a popular way to express the duality in Christ as
outlined by St. Cyril of Alexandria, who had played a central role
in the condemna-tion of Nestorios at the hird Ecumenical Council
(Ephesus, 431), but who remained a point of extreme contention
between Chalcedonians and Monophysites.
What does it mean that Christ is known in two natures? At issue
here is a special form of knowledge that is not a species of
ordinary sense perception. According to Cyril, the mind cannot know
the two natures of Christ in separation, any more than the naked
eye can dis-tinguish between the colors blue and yellow once they
have been unit-ed in the color green.59 he two natures of Christ
are not two objects or things available to human visualization.
Both in his person and at the level of human perception, Christ is
one, and the duality of his na-tures can only be known through a
process of spiritual relection, which Cyril generally calls
contemplation (theoria).60
59 his is not an example that Cyril uses, since it depends on a
mixture or fusion of the two elements that he consistently avoided,
although he does speak of a mixing of the properties of the two
natures in his treatise On the Incarnation (SC 97:282); cf. id.,
Commentary on John 11 (PG 74:488D, 512B). He elsewhere argues that
because colors do not exist in abstraction from the physical bodies
or substances that they color, they can only be distinguished from
them in contemplation, Dialogue on the Trinity 2 (SC
231:324326).
60 Cf. Plotinus, Ennead 3.8.57 (LCL 3:372385).
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The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai
Cyril argued that a similar act of contemplation takes place
when we consider the human person, a single entity that the mind,
and not the sense of sight, understands to be a union of two
elements: body and soul. Once again, the eye cannot actually see
the constituent elements in separation from each other, since the
soul is by nature invisible, and to see a body without a soul is to
view a corpse. In the same way, the two natures of the one Christ
can be known only through the experience of spiritual contemplation
and not by physical seeing. his is a view that Cyril advocated from
the beginning of the Christological controversy, and maintained
throughout all his subsequent work.61
Justinian remained faithful to this principle, and it appears
fre-quently in his writings. He airms that such contemplative
distinc-tions are grounded in Trinitarian theology, where the three
divine hy-postases are known (i.e., distinguished) while remaining
absolutely inseparable.62 It was generally agreed, moreover, that
propositions in Christology had to agree with those in Trinitarian
theology. Justinian therefore applies the same logic to the
distinction of natures in Christ, and makes extensive use of the
Chalcedonian notion that Christ is known in two natures,63 along
with the directly Cyrillian language of contemplation and
conceptualization (epinoia).64 Like Cyril, Jus-tinian insists that
the only kind of seeing that is possible in this context is with
the eyes of the soul.65
61 Cf. Cyril, hird Letter to Nestorius (L. Wickham, ed., Cyril
of Alexandria: Select Letters [Oxford, 1983], 22); id., First
Letter to Succensus (ibid., 76); id., Letter to Eulogios (ibid.,
6264); id., Second Letter to Succensus (ibid., 92; cf. 86); id., On
the Creed 17 (ibid., 114). For further examples of Cyrils use of
theoria in this context, cf. id., Letter to Acacius (ibid., 50; cf.
52); id., Dialogues on the Trinity 45 (SC 237:174; 232; 268; 300);
id., On the Incarnation (SC 97:240250). See also id., Glaphyra 3
(PG 69:129BC); id., On Isaiah (PG 70:312D); id., Commentary On John
1 (PG 73:161B); 75:408D; id., Against heodoret (PG 76:408D); id.,
Letter 46 (PG 77:240C); and id., Letter 50 (PG 77:260A, 276B).
62 Justinian, On the Orthodox Faith (PG 86:995AB, 999D); id.,
Against the Monophysites (PG 86:1105CD, 1140AB).
63 Justinian, Against Origen (PG 86:957B); id., On the Orthodox
Faith (PG 86:999CD, 1003BD, 1009D, 1011AD, 1013A); id., Against the
Monophysites (PG 86:1108D, 1109ACD, 1112AC, 1116D, 1121C, 1133BD,
1137BC, 1140D, 1141D, 1144D).
64 Cf. theoria (PG 86:1005CD, 1007B, 1007CD, 1011D, 1015D,
1113CD); noein (PG 86:997B, 1005C, 1141AB); epinoia (PG 86:1007D,
1009AB); ennoia (PG 86:1113BC).
65 Justinian, Against the Monophysites (PG 86:1113AB).
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The Art Of Seeing
Contemplation: Word and Image
hat the two natures of Christ could be known through
contem-plation was an idea taken from the art of biblical exegesis.
his is not surprising given that Cyrils argument with Nestorios was
directly con-cerned with the interpretation of certain passages in
the New Testa-ment. Like Gregory the heologian ity years before
him, Cyril like-wise had to deal with the problem of the seemingly
contradictory at-tributes that Scripture ascribes to the person of
Christ. But whereas Gregorys opponents had used the human
attributes to deny Christs divinity, Nestorios was now parceling
out the two modes of speech to two separate individuals or
subjects.
Cyrils response to this radical disjunction was a massive
emphasis on unity, and he insisted that the exclusive subject of
all attributes and experiences was the Word of God made lesh.
According to Cyril, the human activities of Christ are not the
expressions of an individual human life distinct from God. Instead,
they are modes of divine revela-tion enabling the immaterial and
incomprehensible Logos to act in and through the lesh, making it
the physical medium of spiritual knowl-edge.66 his is particularly
evident in the miracles of Christ, where di-vine things are wrought
through the agency of human acts and ges-tures, including spitting
on the ground ( John 9:6) and crying out in a loud voice ( John
11:43).67 he Words presence in the lesh is an economy of divine
manifestation, a gracious accommodation to the situation of human
embodiment, enabling human beings to receive divine life and
grace.68
In its original, exegetical context, theoria designates the
activity of understanding the hidden sense of Scripture, of
perceiving the spirit within the letter (cf. 2 Cor 3:6). But
inasmuch as the hidden meaning of all Scripture was the mystery of
God made lesh, theoria was a single act encompassing both
hermeneutics and Christology, a movement from the visible to the
invisible. A word inscribed on paper is visible to the eye, but its
inner meaning is not itself an object of physical vision.
66 Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John 1 (PG 73:132AB).67
Id., hesaurus 23 (PG 75:388C).68 Id., Commentary on John 1 (PG
73:132AB); cf. id., hesaurus 24 (PG 75:393D). Justin-
ian closely follows Cyril on these points; cf. Against heodore
of Mopsuestia (PG 86:1055CD, 1065D, 1071AB).
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The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai
During his sojourn on earth, Christ was likewise the object of
physical vision, and may now be depicted in an icon, but it is the
mind that con-templates the truth of his person and distinguishes
the duality of na-tures within him.
And it is precisely here where the line that separates word and
im-age is erased, where the diference between them collapses. hough
the verbal and the graphic may be fundamentally diferent modes of
repre-sentation, neither mode prevails over the other in terms of
exhaustive signiication, for the spirit may magnify (or contradict)
what the eye and ear perceive. In the face of what exceeds
signiication, words and images fall mute. Words and images are a
point of departure, not a destination. hey stand in direct relation
to truth, without being absolutely one with that truth. And this is
supremely true of all that aspires to represent the divine nature,
which always remains unavailable to human thought, still less to
the naked eye, and can never be captured in a work of art. Indeed
Cyril says that such a thing is not even possible on the level of
created being: he forms and colors of a painting of a king are not
continuous with the king himself, and thus do not show us his
nature.69
In light of the above, it hardly seems possible that the Sinai
Christ, a highly conscious masterpiece of the Justinianic court and
theological environment, was an attempt to portray in colored wax
what Cyril of Alexandria, and now the emperor himself, airmed could
not be seen by human sight. In the irst place, the moderate
Monophysites could not have been expected to unite under an
imperial system whose major sym-bol was an icon of Christ so
obviously susceptible of a Nestorian inter-pretation. At the same
time, a depiction of Christ in which the two na-tures were visually
separated and indeed sharply polarized would have undermined the
emperors commitment to the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria,
being a lagrant repudiation of the latters injunction not to divide
the one Christ into two, picturing a two-faced Emmanuel.70
69 Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John 9 (PG 74:196B); cf.
Basil, Against Eunomios 1.12: Do you know the essence (ousia) of
God? Tell me, then, what is the essence of the earth? With what
faculty will you grasp it? With one of the senses, such as sight?
But sight apprehends only colors (SC 299:214); and Gregory of
Nyssa, Commentary on the Song of Songs 12: he bride says: I sought
him, but found him not (Song 5:6). How can the bridegroom be found
when he does not reveal anything of himself ? He has no color,
form, quantity, place, appearance, evidence, comparison, nor
resemblance; rather, everything we can discover always transcends
our comprehension (GNO 6:357); cf. id., Against Eunomios 1 (GNO
1:80; cf. 105106).
70 Cyril of Alexandria, On the Incarnation (SC 97:240). It
subsequently became clear that icons depict, not natures, but
persons, and so the Seventh Ecumenical Council airmed that: He
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We can, then, deinitively rule out the Chalcedonian
interpreta-tion of the Sinai Christ, along with the idea that it
represents the con-substantiality of the Father and the Son. But,
having done so, we are still let with the visual fact of the icons
compelling duality, which we need to approach from another
perspective. As we saw in the irst part of this chapter, the face
of Christ is strongly marked by a deliberate con-trast between the
right and let hand sides, and it is to these cardinal points that
we shall refocus our attention. As is well known, the
Chris-tological locus classicus for the polarity of right and let
is the Judgment Parable in the Gospel of Matthew (Mt 25:31-46).
Seated on a glorious throne, Christ welcomes the righteous into a
place of heavenly bliss on his right hand side, while sinners are
relegated to a place on his let, where they hear the harrowing
sentence of their eternal damnation.71 As we shall see in what
follows, the duality that our icon portrays is not that of Christs
two natures, but rather a duality within God himself: the
paradoxical co-existence of mercy and judgment.
Divine Polarity
As we saw in the preceding discussion, polarity does not always
imply division, but can be a link between two seemingly opposite
qual-ities that belong to or describe the same reality. Most
religious tradi-tions recognize diferent degrees of complexity
within God, including various dualities, even if these are said to
exist only on the level of hu-man perception. Some religions locate
duality within a single divine igure; others recognize a
multiplicity of gods to whom contradictory activities and functions
are variously parceled out. In some traditions, diferent aspects of
the deity may be disclosed over time, so that God may irst appear
angry or wrathful, followed at some later historical stage by a
display of mercy and love.
Strict monotheism, of course, rules out the existence of a
second god, to whom might be assigned activities such as wrath,
judgment, the inliction of punishment, and cosmic destruction. In
both Judaism and
who venerates the icon venerates the hypostasis of the one
depicted, cited in H. Hennephof, Textus Byzantinos ad Iconomachiam
Pertinentes (Leiden, 1969), no. 296 = Mansi, 13:377E.
71 he salvation of the thief cruciied on Christs right, and the
damnation of the one on his let (Mt 27:38), is a related locus, and
is seen by some Church Fathers as a type of the Last Judgment,
e.g., John Chrysostom (PG 59:625A); cf. Plato, Republic 10
(614C).
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The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai
Christianity, such functions may be executed by an avenging
angel or demon, as in the preliminary judgment immediately
following death. he temporal or historical approach to divine
polarity igures promi-nently within Christianity, where it gives
shape to Christs two com-ings: the irst in humility, and the second
in terrible glory, when he will come again to judge the living and
the dead.
But Christianity also knows of polarities within God that are
much deeper than this, and which present themselves as more abiding
fea-tures of the divine portrait. hus God is one and many, same and
dif-ferent, simple and complex, uniied and diferentiated. God is at
once transcendent and immanent, hidden and revealed, known and
un-known; he is great and small, giver and git, origin and
destination. He is the source of all fecundity, but is himself
innascible; he is both the boundary to all things and the unbounded
ininity about them. He is all things in all, and nothing in
any.72
We see, then, a kind of bipolar structure informing Gods
self-man-ifestation, with an emphasis on the coming together of
opposites in such a way that they continue to coexist. Opposites
are not absorbed into an all-encompassing unity; the philosophical
pull toward simplic-ity is rejected.73 And if theologians have
tended to focus on the episte-mological and metaphysical aspects of
this question, these do not ex-haust the depth of the mystery. No
less important are what we might metaphorically call the extremes
of Gods emotional and psychological life, strongly contrasting
afective states that igure prominently in de-votional literature
and in certain forms of religious art and iconogra-phy, where they
endow the divine with something like a human face.
Gods wrath and his love, his mercy and his justice, are in fact
deep-ly woven into the fabric of the Bible. Although the God of the
Old Testament is frequently chided for his arbitrary its of anger,
irrational rage, and lust for war, the New Testament itself begins
with the threat
72 hese examples are taken from Dionysios the Areopagite, On the
Divine Names, a work most likely written in the early 6th century,
and thus contemporary with the Sinai Christ.
73 See, for example, Gregory of Nyssa, On the Beatitudes 6, who
endeavors both to negate and airm the dizzying contradiction
between divine visibility and invisibility represented respectively
by Matthew 5:8 (Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see
God) and John 1:18 (No man has seen God at any time) (GNO
7/2:136138); cf. id., Catechetical Oration 20, where he argues that
none of the divine attributes may be disjoined from the rest, and
thus in God absolute power is conjoined with self-efacing love (GNO
3/4:53; 61); cf. id., To Eu-stathios (= Basil, Letter 87) (LCL
3:4869).
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