Review

Art

Culture

6 January 2024

5 min read

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.

Interview

Culture

Economics

S&U interviews

16 April 2024

5 min read

Can the economy work for the common good?

Adrian Pabst on the economic framework that is universal yet particular about people.

Laurence Fletcher

Laurence Fletcher is a journalist at the Financial Times.

A man talks animatedly looking at the camera while sitting against a wood panelled wall.

Fondazione Centesimus Annus Pro Pontefice.

Adrian Pabst is Professor of Politics at the University of Kent, and deputy director at The National Institute of Economic and Social Research. His lecture on Just Economy? Catholic Social Thought, Mutualism and Roads Not Yet Taken, was a highlight of the Lincoln Lectures series, organised by Together for the Common Good. Financial markets journalist Laurence Fletcher talks with him to discover more about his thinking.

There is no shortage of commentators ready to point out the apparent deficiencies in the UK’s economy. Widespread in-work poverty, poor productivity growth, regional inequality and a perceived reluctance among employers to train up British workers are just some of the accusations that can be levelled.

But finding realistic, workable solutions is more difficult, as successive governments have found. Is the answer to be found in having higher levels of tax and government spending, or lower? Should governments be intervening more, or give more room for free markets to work? With a general election on the horizon, and with issues of economic growth, government spending and taxation likely to feature prominently, such questions are particularly pertinent.

Offering one alternative way of tackling the problem is Professor Adrian Pabst, a political scientist at the University of Kent, who is an expert on so-called Catholic Social Thought. This approach, which was developed in the 19th century and draws from the Bible, focuses on the dignity of the individual, care for others and the common good, with the aims of social renewal. It provides a framework for thinking about big topics such as international relations, the economy and the environment, and Pabst believes it has much to say about our economy today.

Catholic Social Thought “is very particular. It always speaks to the moment. And it’s highly universal because of it,” he said in a recent interview. “This is what the world is like and this is how we must act.”

Pabst rejects both the idea that everything is fine with our economy (“mythical stories about things working”) and the belief that “everything going to hell in a handcart”.

Instead, his approach is to look at some of the apparent contradictions in our economy - strengths alongside related weaknesses. For instance, how can a country be rich but have poor citizens, or have a very high output of goods and services while many people do not partake in them? Or how can many people have become worse off in recent years, even though wages are growing? Or how can the UK boast an “incredible” City of London that is one of the world’s top financial centres, yet have people without access to capital?

“We have to be realistic about where we are - a low wage, low growth, low productivity economy. We can pay people higher wages over time if we increase productivity. That comes from investment,” he said.

Free markets have at times been heralded as either the answer to all our problems by some on the political right, or the cause of so much misery by some on the left. But Pabst’s approach is more nuanced. Markets should not simply be “the engine for ever-greater inequality”. But, crucially, they are not inherently bad in and of themselves, and often the problem is instead down to a market being stacked in one side’s favour.

“Markets are not one thing,” he said. “They are an outcome of ownership, regulation… There is not a problem with markets per se, but it’s the wrong regulation, ownership concentrated in a very few people.

“There are lots of things we can do much better. But if we replace the market with the state, we’d just be doing [communism] and ultimately we’d be poorer,” he added. “The question is, are we putting society first?”

(As an aside, he also takes a more nuanced view on former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who he believes brought both positives and negatives).

Big tech firms are “oligarchies accountable to no-one. It’s simply not a tenable position. They’re like media companies yet they’re not subject to media laws… We’ve allowed them to build private infrastructures. It needs to be tackled.”

So what would Pabst actually change?

For starters, he believes that too much capital is directed towards the wrong purpose, namely financial speculation. While some would argue that speculation plays an important role in the economy, for instance in price discovery in markets or in taking the other side of the trade, say for farmers who want to hedge crop prices, Pabst is keen to see the economy produce “goods and services that have real worth”. Significantly for how society is structured today, he argues that we do not need “a class that lives off assets at the expense of everyone else”.

Other areas also need to change, he believes. Loopholes should be closed to make it harder for companies to use agency workers rather than employing people. Trade unions need to be encouraged and improved. A national investment bank, grouping together the existing, disparate pots of money, could direct capital to sectors and regions where it is needed. As is already the case in Germany, companies and society would both benefit from having employees on their boards.

More economic decisions can be devolved from national government to a local level, but challenges such as climate change or regulating the big, powerful technology companies - which he describes as “modern day plutocracies” - should be tackled at a higher level.

Big tech firms are “oligarchies accountable to no-one”, he said. “It’s simply not a tenable position. They’re like media companies yet they’re not subject to media laws… We’ve allowed them to build private infrastructures. It needs to be tackled.”

And (more of a comment on the US than the UK) he sees little value in companies reporting earnings quarterly, which he said is driven by “short-term profit maximisation”.

Intriguingly, Pabst does not shy away from taking a stance on one of the most divisive issues of our times: immigration.

Catholic Social Thought, he explains, is humane and pro-immigrant. But, to break with what he calls “a low wage, low skill model”, mass economic migration is to be discouraged, because it is detrimental to both the sending and receiving countries.

“[We say] yes to refugees, to asylum. But no to mass economic migration,” he said.

So, going into an election, how likely are we to see things change for the better?

Rather than being optimistic - the belief that eventually things will get better - Pabst is hopeful, because he believes that things could be different, but he is not necessarily expecting it.

“I remain hopeful,” he said. “I just don’t quite see who’s going to do it.”