JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

to appear, move and sing, the appearance of God was often
forbidden, even as a disembodied voice. The late development
of oratorio in France, for instance, is directly connected with
such a ban, which was relaxed officially only about the middle
of the 18th century. In Russia the prohibition against representing
biblical characters in a sung work was in force until
the end of the Czarist regime.
See also separate articles on individual characters, subjects
and books of the Bible and Apocrypha, and on *Cantillation;
*Haggadah; *Hallel; *Hallelujah; *Music; *Priestly
Blessing; *Psalms (Music); *Shema.
[Bathja Bayer]
art
The Hebrew Bible has been a continual source of inspiration
to artists from classical antiquity until the present day and
was a major source until the 17th century. In early Christian
wallpaintings in the Roman catacombs and in the carvings
on sarcophagi certain images including “Sacrifice of Isaac”,
“Moses striking the Rock”, the “Three Men in the Fiery Furnace”
(Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego), and “Jonah and
the Whale” continually recur. These images, which were associated
with Christian doctrines concerning the life to come,
have their artistic origins in pagan art and also, perhaps, in
Jewish visual representations of the Bible, such as those that
survive in the wallpaintings of the synagogue at *Dura-Europos.
In the East Roman (Byzantine) empire, the visual interpretation
of the Bible was dominated by the icon, or “holy
image”, whose form, credited with a divine origin, was preserved
unchanged for hundreds of years. This precluded the
development of any narrative interest. The characteristic artform
of Byzantium was the mosaic, but the troubled condition
of the West after the fall of Rome discouraged ambitious
schemes of architectural embellishment and favored instead
the more modest illuminated manuscript. This was at first
somewhat stylized, but the Carolingian period of the ninth
century witnessed a renaissance of creativity. Traditional images
were transformed, iconography was developed, and a
number of important schools of illumination came into being.
Until the close of the Middle Ages, Christian representations
of the Bible were governed by certain dogmatic considerations.
Scenes from the Old Testament were held to prefigure episodes
from the New, and were generally depicted in that light. Thus,
the sacrifice of Isaac was taken to be symbolic of the Crucifixion
of Jesus; the story of Jonah and the whale as a prefiguration
of the Resurrection. In the age of the great Romanesque and
Gothic cathedrals, from the 12th century onward, most of the
arts tended to be subordinated to a total architectural ensemble.
Gradually, however, each art began to regain a life of its
own. The static carved figures round the cathedrals began to
converse in groups; in Italy they were placed in niches which
isolated them in an independent area of space. The same tendency
was to be seen in other arts.
The Gothic architecture of the North eliminated wallspace
in order to let in the light, so that frescoes were re-
bible
placed by stained-glass windows. In Italy wallpainting continued
to develop but, instead of remaining subordinate to the
architectural scheme, it became increasingly of equal importance
to its setting. This tendency reached its culmination in
Michelangelo’s great biblical frescoes in the Sistine Chapel
in Rome. In the same way, illuminations which had formerly
been integral to the text of a manuscript now developed
into miniature paintings, in which an artist’s individuality
could be expressed. Other changes occurred. Images no
longer depended to the same degree on their purely symbolic
significance. Artists sought to treat figures naturalistically,
placing them in their natural settings. More and more, the
biblical subject provided an opportunity for the study of
contemporary life. Paintings developed a third dimension,
with colors that were naturalistic rather than symbolic. The
interest in the natural setting finally developed into landscapepainting.
By the 17th century, the landscape in the paintings
of Nicholas Poussin was given the same importance as the
biblical figures, and in the paintings of his contemporary
Claude Lorrain it is given even more. Some of Poussin’s biblical
scenes are primarily studies of nature; thus his “Ruth
and Boaz” (c. 1660–64, Paris, Louvre) is in reality a portrait
of summer.
National schools of painting developed, each with its
own characteristics. The Italians rendered space according to
the laws of perspective and took inspiration for their figures
from the art of antiquity. French painters such as Claude Lorrain
utilized standardized compositions resembling stage-sets.
The Germans sometimes divided up the picture-plane into a
number of sections according to the theme. Italian painters
favored boldly constructed landscapes and interiors, showing
man as the master of space. Italian interiors were clearly
visible and well defined, whereas northern interiors could be
dark and mysterious, with filtered light such as is found in the
works of *Rembrandt. The Italian Renaissance glorified man.
In his Creation of Adam (1511, Vatican, Sistine Chapel), Michelangelo
depicted Adam as the perfect man, the image of God.
Michelangelo created several of the most famous interpretations
of Old Testament figures. His sculpture of Moses on the
tomb of Pope Julius II (c. 1513–16, Rome, S. Pietro in Vincoli)
and David (at the Florence Academy) and his painting of Jeremiah
(c. 1511) in the Sistine Chapel frescoes are particularly
noteworthy. In the 17th century, Rubens treated biblical themes
with great dramatic freedom, and Rembrandt restored an element
of supernatural mystery to painting, from which it had
been banished by the development of naturalistic representation.
Rembrandt lived in the heyday of Protestantism, which
had brought the Old Testament into favor but at the same time
disapproved of paintings of the Bible. Nevertheless, it was a
major theme in Rembrandt’s work. In his biblical paintings, he
abandoned the longstanding tradition of typology and treated
each episode on its merits and not as a prefiguration of something
else. His tender, emotional treatment often suggested a
subject rather than described it. His famous painting of David
and Saul, for example, depicts their psychological relationship
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 673