Can Art Envision the Word? An Analysis of Christian Parables in Scripture and Paintings
Daniel Frederick, American University of Sharjah (United States)
Abstract
Jesus Christ was not a painter, musician, nor writer. But he was a consummate public speaker and rhetorician. One of Jesus’ primary strategies was to affect his audience through their sense of vision—both optical and cognitive. This is why, for example, in Jesus’ ministry there is great focus on curing blindness. But optical vision is not the same as cognitive vision, the ability to grasp information and to be motivated and delighted by it. Jesus enhances his audience’s cognitive vision by using parables. Christ’s parables invite the listener to co-create the vision with him because they require powers of literary interpretation. But if this ability is lacking, as Christ admits (Matthew 13:10-11), his parables have the potential to obfuscate as much as they can illuminate. Consider another stumbling block—the oral medium itself. Listeners have no way to visualize a written message: they cannot ‘scroll back’ and read again what Jesus said. If anyone in Jesus’ audiences shuffled even for a moment, they could miss a key word. What is auditory then must become visual. Scripture is one visible solution to preserving the oral parable. A painting of the parable is another. This presentation will compare some of Christ’s parables as written in the gospels with famous artistic renderings. For example, in the parable of the sower by Peter Bruegel the Elder, we see in the background a small boat with a crowd gathered round it. In the foreground is the action of the parable: a single farmer, just as Christ describes, sowing seeds. But to what extent will the visual rendition of Breugel’s painting complement Christ’s visual depiction in words?
Keywords |
Parables, Painting, Christian, Scripture |