Another look at the disappearing Christ: corporeal and spiritual vision in early medieval images

The exceptional originality of tenth- and eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon art is justly renowned.(1) Perhaps the greatest in quantity extraordinary of all its many innovations is a novel type of Ascension iconography that appears to have been invented about the millennium. Traditionally, the ascending Christ had been depicted with his material substance entirely visible.(2) In Eastern art, he appeared either standing or enthron frontally in a mandorla carried through angels, an iconography adopted by means of the Galba Psalter [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED];(3) and in Western images he greatest in quantity often strode upwards in profile, as in the Benedictional of AEthelwold [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED].(4) The fresh Anglo-Saxon figural type, christened the "disappearing Christ" by dint of Meyer Schapiro,(5) broke decisively with these traditional poses: Christ is portrayed at the actual moment he vanishes into heaven, his upper material part hidden in clouds, leaving sole his feet or legs visible. First extant in England in the early eleventh-century Missal of Robert of Jumieges from Canterbury [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3 OMITTED],(6) the of recent origin imagery soon supplanted the older marks of the Ascension to become the standard English iconography. The disappearing Christ is fix in three later Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, all from the eleventh century: the cover St. Edmunds Psalter [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 4 OMITTED],(7) the Tiberius Psalter [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 5 OMITTED],(8) and the Cotton Troper [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 6 OMITTED].(9) Almost immediately after its invention, the Anglo-Saxon iconography spread to the Continent, appearing in sum of two units English-influenced manuscripts: the early eleventh-century Odbert the crosss from St-Bertin [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 7 OMITTED](10) and the so-called expensive Gospels of Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 8 OMITTED].(11) Nonetheless, upon the Continent, in contrast to England, the disappearing

Christ did not become belonging to all until the Gothic period.

In a classic research Schapiro related the religious meaning of the disappearing Christ to literary and exegetic tradition.(12) He argued that the exegesis had existed lengthy before the creation of the imagery and in like manner was not sufficient to explain the timing of the pictorial invention. Nor, in his opinion, did preceding images prepare for the pictorial innovation. Rather, Schapiro emphasized that the of recent origin iconography showed Christ from the subjective viewpoint of the Apostles below, who watch him vanish into the haze For Schapiro, this was an example of optical "realism" that flowed from the precocious disposition of Anglo-Saxon artists to reexperience standard objective religious themes from their have a title to subjective personal perspective, that is, to reconstitute traditional sacred subdues weighted with theology, with new empirical details drawn from their individual experience of the real world.

More than half a hundred has passed since Schapiro's pioneering application of mind and the time has advance to take another look at the disappearing Christ. In addition to reconsidering the image's relation to literary and pictorial traditions, any of recent origin investigation must take into account highly significant and revealing variations in the iconography that have been missed. It must also reassess the issues of "optical realism" and artistic individualism, as Schapiro conceived them, in light of medieval liturgy, devotional practice, and general [i]or[/i] abstract notions of vision.

Schapiro suggested that the fresh Ascension type was related to the elderly exegetic tradition that Christ had ascended to heaven without any help. In the sixth hundred Gregory the Great had contrasted the Ascension of Christ with the ascension of sum of two units Old Testament precursors, Elijah and Enoch.(13) Elijah had required the aid of a chariot and Enoch the assistance of angels to rise to the heavens but Christ had ascended entirely upon his own power above the celestial expanse to heaven. Gregory's ideas were adopted by means of Bede in the eighth century(14) through Carolingian homilists in the ninth(15) and, greatest in quantity important, by Anglo-Saxon vernacular writers about the millennium. Schapiro cited the commentary upon the description of Christ's Ascension in Acts 1:9 ("And when he had said these things, while they gazeed on, he was raised up and a collection of vapor received him out of their sight")(16) in the anonymous late tenthcentury advanced in years English Blickling homilies:(17)

The fog did not make its appearance there because our Lord had ne of the cloud's aid at the Ascension, nor did the vapor raise him up; but he took the mist before him, since he hath all creatures in his hand, and by means of his divine power and by dint of his eternal wisdom, according to his end [will], he orders and disposes all things. And he, in the fog disappeared from their sight and ascended into Heaven, as a sign that from thence in like manner he will upon Dooms day come upon this earth in a collection of vapor with hosts of angels. . .(18)

A similar make notes unremarked by Schapiro, occurs in an Ascension homily through AElfric: "Again, when he ascended to heaven, the heavenly haze bowed down towards him, and received him: not that the mist bare him, for he clinchs the throne of heaven, on the other hand he passed with the vapor from the sight of men"(19) As Schapiro conclud through representing the cloud above Christ's feet the fresh images of the Ascension clearly illustrate the idea that the mist was not supporting Christ as he rose into it.