Sacred
Art
Old St. Mary's Church in Cincinatti,
Ohio
Sacred art is true and beautiful when its form corresponds to its
particular vocation: evoking and glorifying, in faith and adoration,
the transcendent mystery of God - the surpassing invisible beauty
of truth and love visible in Christ, who "reflects the glory
of God and bears the very stamp of his nature," in whom "the
whole fullness of deity dwells bodily." This spiritual beauty
of God is reflected in the most holy Virgin Mother of God, the angels,
and saints. Genuine sacred art draws man to adoration, to prayer,
and to the love of God, Creator and Savior, the Holy One and Sanctifier.
(CCC 2502)
For this reason bishops, personally or through delegates,
should see to the promotion of sacred art, old and new, in all its
forms and, with the same religious care, remove from the liturgy and
from places of worship everything which is not in conformity with
the truth of faith and the authentic beauty of sacred art. (CCC
2503)
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The Giotto Crucifix
The History of the Painting
The work belongs to the period of Giotto's youth (probably realized
ca. 1288-90) and constitutes a fundamental moment for the history of
Italian art, since in this work the artist begins his renewal of Italian
painting style and iconography by realizing a new figure of Christ on
the cross, profoundly natural and human, rather than the previous images
of the divinity, Byzantine in origin, which were mainly symbolic.
At the beginning of the 1200's, in fact, the new Christus patiens iconographic
model was spread throughout Italy by the Pisan school, as the great
success of Giunta demonstrates, with his production of various painted
crosses in Pisa, Assisi, and Bologna. This was the model followed in
Florence by Coppo di Marcovaldo and then by Cimabue, who with his work
for Santa Croce establishes the direct precedent which Giotto had to
confront a few years later.
The cross painted by Giotto for the Dominican convent of Santa Maria
Novella is, therefore, at the same time an exceptional document of Giotto's
artistic and expressive turning point and a manifesto of the new religiosity
proposed to the people by the Dominicans.
The elements that make up this new language are the natural construction
and three-dimensionality of the body, volumetric and pulled down by
gravity that makes the arms bend, the curved hands rendered in a stupendous
prospective vision, and the real, human expression of Christ's suffering.
The powerful affirmation of the human physicality of Christ contains
an evident message for the Cathar heresy, then present in Florence,
that condemned physical reality as something belonging to evil, opposed
to the spiritual world, according to a Manicheanism of ancient origin.
The prominent religious commitment of the Dominicans consisted precisely
in their opposition to this heresy. For this reason here is emphasized
the human and concrete body of Christ who conquers death and promises
mankind to resurrect on the last day in the completeness of body and
spirit.
This extraordinary artistic masterpiece is also a masterpiece from
the technical point of view: the great cross, 5.4 meters high, is a
high-quality wood construction assembled according to refined criteria,
and the painting remains as a witness both to the young artist's profound
knowledge of traditional techniques and to his will to innovation in
this field as well.
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