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.

Explainer

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3 May 2024

5 min read

Adapting Doctor Who: it's time for change

The fan debate on associating disability with evil lacks nuance.

Harry Gibbins

Harry Gibbins is a doctoral researcher at the University of Aberdeen. His PhD concerns the intersection between autism and Christian ministry.

Davros, an alien leader sits in the lower half of a Dalek.

Davros: leader of the Daleks.

In an interview with behind-the-scenes show Doctor Who Unleashed, returning showrunner Russel T Davies had this to say about how iconic Doctor Who baddie Davros was to be portrayed in a mini-episode produced for charity event Children in Need last year.

“We had long conversations about bringing Davros back, because he's a fantastic character, time and society and culture and taste has moved on. And there's a problem with the Davros of old in that he's a wheelchair user, who is evil. And I had problems with that. And a lot of us on the production team had problems with that, of associating disability with evil. And trust me, there's a very long tradition of this.”

He continues to explain that this led the production team to depict Davros differently. Gone is the facial scaring, the wheelchair, the robotic eye, and the mechanical hand. Now, as Davies explains, Davros is seen through a lens in which disability stops being a way of identifying evil.

“This is our lens, this is our eye. Things used to be black and white, they’re not black and white anymore, and Davros used to look like that and he looks like this now.”

Davies’ comments caused somewhat of a split online with some fans. On the one hand, Davies is continuing a tradition that can be traced back to his previous work on Doctor Who between 2005 and 2010. For example, he purposefully wrote Billie Piper’s character Rose Tyler as working class to cut against the gain of the prim-and-proper received pronunciation of previous companion characters. Perhaps Davies was tired of the limited scope of once again portraying the villain as disabled. Just as he didn’t want another female companion who lacked agency and depth, depiction of Davros as disabled simply wouldn’t fit with this modern incarnation of the show. On the other hand, in his comments, Davies seems to suggest that if this character ever appears again, he will not be disabled, even if it contradicts previous storylines, retroactively removing this part of the character as if it was never there to begin with.

Davros isn’t evil because he’s disabled, so why is Davies so hellbent on changing something that wasn’t an issue to begin with?

But is Davies’ efforts necessary? Reddit user u/Bowtie327 suggests that Davros’ disability isn’t important, “I can’t say I ever even drew a connection around Davros, being evil, and being disabled”, whilst another user u/PenguinHighGround claims that as a disabled person themselves they found him “weirdly inspiring, his (sic) goals are abhorrent, but he didn’t let his physical issues limit him”. X user @Dadros3 highlights how, as a wheelchair user, Davros has become a sort of science-fiction icon. He euphemistically states that “evil comes in all forms, all races, all genders, all abilities, and all disabilities. We cannot stand by and allow the cancellation of something for fear of offence that doesn’t exist”.

We are starting to see where the conversation heads; there are worries of by simply removing disability from the equation no effort is made to necessarily further the cause of disabled representation in media. Similarly, Davros isn’t evil because he’s disabled, so why is Davies so hellbent on changing something that wasn’t an issue to begin with? Whether it's that Davros’ disability wasn’t noticed by a majority able-bodied audience, or that his evil ideology has nothing to do with being disabled, Davros should stay put!

What becomes clear is that the changes made to depicting Davros is a product of the philosophy of change that is woven into the show’s DNA.

There’s a nuance that I believe has been missed by these arguments, a nuance that speaks to the philosophy that underpins what has led Doctor Who to last so long. I do not believe that Davies is suggesting that we pretend that harmful depictions of disabled people didn’t happen. Rather, this is a progression of a core part of Doctor Who.

Doctor Who encompasses change. Whether it’s the titular character’s face changing every few years, new story motifs coming and going, or even entirely new production teams, change is what keeps the Doctor Who machine whirring. It is clear that in this new era of the show that Davies is looking for a sort of fresh start. That is what keeps Doctor Who alive, and I think it’s what can make it such a great show. The ability to, despite its long history, still tell a new story. Times where I think the show has suffered has been when it has tried too hard to emulate what has come before.

This is a good opportunity to look back at how disability has been characterised in the media. It is good to sit with this tension even if we didn’t notice it and even if we don’t necessarily take offence. Interestingly, in the brief discussions Davies has had in the behind the scene footage he never mentions offence, nor does he want to attribute blame onto anyone for depicting a wheelchair user in such a way. Instead, he looks forward, just as we do as an audience. Forwards to opportunities to encapsulate the real lived experiences of disabled people, not only and narrowly looking at it as a way of identifying the baddie. Speaking to Doctor Who Magazine in 2022, casting director Andy Pryor stated that he is actually intentionally trying to cast more disabled actors claiming that “If you can’t cast diversely on Doctor Who, what show can you do it on?”. This is even reflected in the set design, with the TARDIS now being completely wheelchair accessible. What becomes clear is that the changes made to depicting Davros is a product of the philosophy of change that is woven into the show’s DNA.

The original 1975 story ‘Genesis of the Daleks’, in which Davros first appears, is still available to watch on BBC iPlayer; no attempt has been made to alter the original to remove the problematic depiction of disability. These stories are still there for us to watch and learn from, not to pave over and pretend they didn’t happen. Perhaps this means Davies and the rest of the production team at Bad Wolf will be cautious about featuring Davros again. What we can say is that Doctor Who is a unique icon in the television space in the way it demonstrates how we respond to change.