Pesellino: making the vital visible

Great art doesn’t just delight, it educates. Andrew Davison recalls learning deep wisdom from a child as he reviews the Pesellino exhibition at the National Gallery, London.

Andrew Davison

Andrew works at the intersection of theology, science and philosophy. He is Canon and Regius Professor of Divinity at Christ Church, Oxford.

A painted altarpiece depicts a crucified Christ surrounded by followes, angels and soldiers.

The Pistoia Santa Trinita Altarpiece, Francesco Pesellino.

The National Gallery

My favourite idol features prominently in National Gallery’s new exhibition of paintings by Francesco Pesellino (1422–1457). I say that by way of provocation: I don’t really think it’s an idol, but that is how it was described to me – by a ten-year-old – in one of the best conversations I’ve ever had as a teacher.

That was fifteen years ago. I was in the gallery to give a theological tour, as part of a Confirmation class for Westminster Abbey. Half an hour in, we came to Pesellino’s Pistoia Altarpiece. It’s a glorious painting, but I was unconvinced by what it sets out to do, with its dead Christ within a portrayal of the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity is about the nature of God, as love and life, and there’s no death there.

Not that I mean to single out Pesellino for criticism. He isn’t the only painter to represent God that way. Massacio’s version is one of the most significant works of the early Florentine Renaissance, resurrecting linear perspective in painting. Just down the road from the National Gallery, at the Courtauld Institute, there’s a similar painting of the Trinity by Botticelli. They’re all magnificent, I just think that if you’re going to try to depict God, the emphasis should be on life.

Standing before Pesellino’s painting fifteen years ago, with those misgivings in mind, I asked the dozen or so kids in the Confirmation class what might be wrong with what the painter as trying to do. One child replied instantly: ‘Please Father, it is an idol.’ Dread rose within me. This child was an Arab Christian. Had he, I wondered, grown up in a culture that treated religious art as idolatrous? Had I offended his conscience continuously for the past half hour, with painting after painting? Best to find out. ‘Have the other paintings been idols?’, I asked. ‘No’, he replied. ‘Why not? Why is this one bad?’ His reply came without pause: ‘Because there’s God the Father in it.’ This was getting interesting. ‘So’, I asked, ‘it’s OK to show Jesus, like the other paintings we’ve seen today, but not God the Father?’ ‘Yes’, was his firm opinion.

These are deep waters, and this was a thoughtful child. To this day, the Orthodox Churches generally forbid depicting of God the Father in icons. Then came one of the most glorious moments of my life as a teacher. ‘Why’s that?’, I asked. ‘Why can we paint Jesus, but not the Father?’ The boy stood silent for some moments. ‘Because’, he said, the cogs of his mind clearly turning, ‘because… because God has made an image of himself in Jesus… You could see Jesus… so you can paint him.’ This was no pre-packaged answer. He was not recycling anything he’d been told before. He was recapitulating the arguments of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (at Nicaea, in AD 787) in real time.

The eight century was a turbulent time when it comes to religious images. They were supressed in the Byzantine Empire from around AD 730, with a firm condemnation in AD 754. Twenty-three years later, at Nicaea, the church reversed the ban. The decisive argument was formulated by St John of Damascus (AD 675 or 676 – 749): ‘When the Invisible One becomes visible to flesh, you may then draw a likeness of His form.’ It’s the same position as our young theologian in the National Gallery had got to on his own.

In this way, Christian art rest on Christmas: on the Incarnation, on God’s coming-into-the-flesh. Heir to the Judaic prohibition of ‘graven images’ Christianity – or most of it – made its peace with depicting holy things, and art in churches, because of Christmas, where we see ‘God made visible’ in Jesus.

In the mystery of the Word made flesh

the light of your glory has shone anew upon our minds

that seeing here God made visible,

we may be caught up in love for God whom we cannot see.

Those are words from the central acclamation of Christmas (the Eucharistic preface) at Midnight Mass (and at Holy Communion for the rest of Christmastide). ‘Seeing here God made visible’.

The events of Christmas form one of the two poles of Christian art. Some delightful examples feature in the Pesellino exhibition: a virgin and child and an Annunciation. The other supremely worthy subject for Christian art is the crucifixion and all that surrounds it. As I have noted, in the current exhibition the crucifixion features in his Trinity altarpiece. God’s humanity is most clearly witnessed at the beginning of Christ’s life, and at the end.

In the intervening years, I have mellowed towards Pesellino’s painting, and that way of depicting something about God. Painting the eternal reality of God is impossible, but in Jesus we see what we need to see. There is no death in God, but the crucifixion is what God’s life looks like when it is made flesh in a world full of evil. The crucifixion shows God’s embrace of human life to the furthest extremes of suffering and degradation. It shows the life of God overcoming death. We can hold onto what the crucifixion offers in a painting like this one, while remembering that the Resurrection underlines the priority of God’s life over death. One painting can’t say everything.

Those fifteen years ago, I was aware that I’d been in a remarkable exchange, one that I would not forget. As I found across my time as a curate, children ask the best theological questions. That might be reason to go to see the Pesellino exhibition with a child. Alongside the paintings I have mentioned already, there are also two gloriously child-friendly panels, each showing multiple events from the life of King David. They offer a sort of fifteenth century comic strip, except that the events are fused into one long scene. Pesellino was a master at painting animals. Magnifying glasses are provided to help you search them out.

Pesellino: A Renaissance Master Revealed, The National Gallery, London, until 19 March.

Review

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Culture

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24 September 2024

4 min read

Filterworld: algorithmic anxiety is flattening our culture

The rule of vanilla lets our unfeeling gadgets decide what’s best for us.

Simon Burton-Jones

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

A podcast guest speaks in front of a mic.

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Sebastian Pandelache on Unsplash.

Here’s another diagnosis to add to modern malaise: algorithmic anxiety. It’s described by Kyle Chayka in his excellent book Filterworld (Heligo Books, 2024) as the:

…awareness that we must constantly contend with automated technological processes beyond our understanding and control, whether in our Facebook feeds, Google Maps driving directions, or Amazon product promotions.

We don’t understand algorithms. Even if we did, we wouldn’t know how they actually work on us as every tech company keeps it a secret, lest competitors learn from them. This has led to the algorithm becoming the century’s newest bogeyman, a phantom we can reference in conversation to make us sound tech savvy and culturally knowing even while we remain in the dark.

‘Algorithmic has become a byword for anything that feels too slick, too reductive, or too optimised for attracting attention’.

Kyle Chayka

One of the oddest outcomes of the ascendency of the algorithm is the seemingly diametric effects on politics and culture. In politics it has polarised people, sorting us into opposing camps and then ensuring we hear only good things about our ‘side’ and only maddening things about the ‘opposing’ side. Instead of calmly listening to a different view, we hurl insults, as performative as Prime Minister’s Question Time and about as enlightening.

Something different is happening with culture. Here, the algorithm makes culture more homogenous; in the words of Kyle Chayka, it is ‘flattened’. The basic rule of what he calls Filterworld is that ‘the popular becomes more popular, and the obscure becomes even less visible’. It is a strange re-mix of Jesus for the digital age: ‘to all those who have, more will be given…but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.

The life of an Instagram post is said to be determined in the first five minutes. If it has engagement, it can be sure of more; if it gets none, it will sink. Visibility on social media is vital for artists of all kinds, because this is where all publicity begins. Artists try and game the system, figuring out what kind of content the algorithm will promote. In the process, their creative expression is subtly compromised. People begin to write in a style that gets attention, and what gets attention is decided by the algorithm. Those who tweet will know how the short, pared back medium starts to influence their life away from X. Musicians know that art which is safe and mainstream – the public’s crowded middle where performers like Ed Sheeran have thrived – is likely to succeed.

‘Much of culture now has the hollow, vacant feeling of having been made by algorithm’ according to the cultural commentator Dean Kissick. Chayka observes that: ‘algorithmic has become a byword for anything that feels too slick, too reductive, or too optimised for attracting attention’.

It is often at the margins that breakthroughs emerge; art that makes us see this world in a new and divine light.

There is a valid counter to this development. Previously, what we read, heard and saw as cultural consumers was determined by a small set of experts who filtered content for us. These experts were often drawn from a narrow section of society who inevitably brought their own biases to bear. While this may be true, it is hardly a triumph for the public to have an unfeeling gadget decide what’s best for them, based on what we have liked before and what seems to appeal to most people. At the ice cream vendor, this is like reaching for vanilla every time.

The truth is, in necessarily surrendering to the algorithm (for what alternative is there online?) we miss huge volumes of culture that might appeal to us. It is about as effective as deciding what sea life we like based only on what pops up to the surface of the water.

The best art is not always the most popular and there is a risk that the divine spark of invention that the creator God has placed within each of us – the unlimited potential of being made in the image of God – will not be fanned into existence as often as it could be. Chasing likes is no substitute for patient inspiration. It is often at the margins that breakthroughs emerge; art that makes us see this world in a new and divine light.

‘Behold, I am making all things new’ says the one who sits on the throne in Revelation. That algorithms are making all things similar is the reality we are learning to live with.