Authors: David Shields,Matthew Vollmer
24
Iconographic Conventions of
Pre- and Early Renaissance:
Italian Representations of the
Flagellation of Christ
Rachel B. Glaser
THE NEW TESTAMENT
offers no specific description of the flagellation of Jesus Christ and very little of the rest of the Passion: Jesus’s criminal indictment, subsequent suffering, and execution. Yet this series of events received
massive artistic attention
in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, depicted thousands of times with a certain consistency of imagery. Biblical flagellation scenes in painting and sculpture from 1300 A.D. to 1525 A.D. exhibit unmistakable iconographic repetition. Given the lack of source material from which to draw, artists of these centuries heavily borrowed from their peers and predecessors.
Historical coverage of the Passion is slim. No direct description of the event exists in the Synoptic Gospels and only one small segment is devoted to it in the Gospel of John. No one reads this segment lost within John. In this significant historical void, great artistic liberties could initially be taken as interest in the subject expanded. Someone once decided, for example, that Jesus had been bound to a column, and this achieved a thematic resonance with the audiences of the time, encouraging artists to repeat it. Someone decided Christ was slender, his hair framing his long face. Long like a horse and long like unhappy. Thereafter, artists followed formats proven to convey the message successfully, deviating rarely and then only slightly. It was established early on how the flagellation was to appear and no monumental compositional alterations occurred for hundreds of years.
The Latin word for
whip
,
flagellum
is also a long, slender projection from the cell body, only visible with a powerful microscope. Its function is to propel a unicellular or small multicellular organism by beating with whiplike motion. In larger animals, flagella are often arranged en masse at the surface of a stationary cell and serve to move fluids along mucous membranes, such as the lining of the trachea. Flagella increase or decrease their rotational speed relative to the strength of the proton-motive force.
This common practice of formal imitation and borrowing is unremarkable, but as the accumulation of passion-related imagery accelerates through this time period, visual history achieves legitimacy. Passion (from the
Latin
patior
, meaning to suffer or to endure) is an emotion of intense, compelling enthusiasm for
a person, object, activity or idea. The Passion quotient is used in
Thomas Friedman’s
formula of
CQ + PQ > IQ
.
Curiosity
plus passion is greater than intelligence.
Historical coverage is
slim
. No description exists. Christ was slender; his hair casually framing his long face. Long like a horse’s and unhappy. Long like a bluesman playing his blues. Like a mostly empty ketchup, a basset hound looking low with eyelids lower. His chest had some or none hairs. A beard over his cheeks because that was the style back then;
only warriors
shaved their beards
, and that was to show how sharp their swords were. That was for fun. Also it was custom for a cuckold to have a warrior shave his beard, publicly showing his marriage as flawed, an invitation to flaw it further.
Curiosity plus passion is
almost
equal to being smart.
E =
a Mazda car driving twice as fast.
E =
Michael Jordan dunking two balls while coughing. God is the closest thing to an all-knowing entity. She indexes over 9.5
billion
Web pages, which is more than any search engine on the Web. She sorts through this vast amount of knowledge using her patented PageRank technology. God is virtually everywhere on earth at the same time. With the proliferation of Wi-Fi networks, one will eventually be able to access God.
Through repetition, validity is assumed. The Flagellation thus becomes one part of a larger visual narrative, instantly recognizable. Flagellation scenes turn
iconic
in their thematic compatibility with each other, to see one is to be reminded of others already seen. This repetition strengthens their representation in religious culture. As with the Crucifixion, a familiarity close to comfort arises when gazing at a crucifixion painting, knowing absolutely the thing being killed will be a white male with a long face and relatively long nose. Nails and blood are optional. Clouds optional. Weeping women optional.
Children tend to add a curlicue of smoke upon the addition of a chimney in a drawing of a house. What if all beach scenes had a symmetry of beach umbrellas and a ratio of birds to sky? A formation that urged copying. In China, there are no curlicues of smoke in children’s drawings. Smoke is usually represented by several soft, wavering lines. Studies such as this show Chinese children to be more thoughtful and observant than American children, who abbreviate visual language immediately to symbols. The sometimes discounted studies of children’s drawings have informed larger studies of lifestyle differences. “California coast drawings varied greatly according to the quality of the children’s mark-making tools. Wealthy children had the opportunity to mosaic with minerals and a wide variety of artistic plastics, whereas children in poorer neighborhoods stuck to construction paper and in extreme cases,
broken glass
.”
Stick-men and -women are not necessarily the child-drawing norm. Studies found young Russian children making “bubble-men,” as researchers referred to them. These rounded sketches were thought to originate from the abundance of snowmen during the lengthy, snow-prone winters of the region.
When American college students take their year abroad, there is no one familiar to greet them except a loneliness they outgrew years ago. Friends will be forged how pioneers forged rivers, how criminals and poor test-takers forge signatures. From this great distance, they will finally be able to
see
America, from looking around and not finding it. Buildings like cakes instead of Legos. If they go to art museums, they feel anxious. How can one
stand
the exquisitely stunning, divinely magnificent paintings in European cities? Making one nostalgic for the Middle Ages, the early ages, painted so
painfully
there are nowhere strokes, nowhere splatters, unnerving to see a scene so deeply actualized in two dimensions, the David in three, appealingly human, the most appealing human, a new ideal to bring home along with the souvenirs.
All humans find themselves in an anxious daze by the end of these museums, the final floors are skipped or else run through frantically. The way to take these paintings in is to blink them, blur them, to look a little less than needed. Such eye-pleasing two-dimensionals beg to be marred, trashed, exposed in two dimensions. A wad of gum would do it, little circles of spit, a knife to reveal the wall behind it. It has been suggested the Louvre commission some copies
of good size
, very fine, expert renderings of one of the museum’s paintings, perhaps a collaged scene of a few, hung near the cafeteria to be mauled and defaced by tourists sick on beauty.
Back to the discussion on David: Michelangelo has set up more than one teenage girl for disappointment. Delicate, arrogant, naturally toned, with big hands to hold, many girls fly home heart-struck, it’s true! Flocking to the first curly-haired boy they see, looking more carefully at the football team, too much time in the library, tying the phone cord in knots, settling for a prom date, etc., etc., rooting for Italy even in the Olympics. Relative to Jesus but in a different way. One girl’s experience with both was to fall for the David, returning home only to sculpt him out of white chocolate and melt him (
melt
him!
) on a hot plate. Then meeting a David and understanding the world’s preoccupation with Jesus, see diary entry below:
The bluest eye proposal was met by one unknowing boy
who had the bluest eyes, winning, generous, butt-perfect,
pleasing, spontaneous and breathing, mother nature’s son but shy,
silly, dillied
all down. If Jesus was like that, then finally I understand
everyone’s preoccupation.
If one could suspend knowledge and judgment, consider Jesus as the kind-hearted high school sweetheart who dies
tragically
in a car crash
(and just two days before graduation!) A dead boyfriend, as we all know, is
impossible
to “
get over
,” having committed no crime besides
stealing
our hearts, etc. Breaking off a relationship with no one
breaking
it off
, this kind of end is very hard to accept, leaving the left one thinking,
if only
I had driven myself, if only I hadn’t
insisted
on ice cream
, if only the weather had been nicer, or the road had been cleared, or my purse hadn’t been
lazily
draped over the gear shift,
etc.
The large Christian world wants to meet, to speak with, the tragically died-young, the perpetual. There is no old-aged Lennon, no middle-aged Cobain running amuck. To die young is to stay young, to keep everyone wanting to stay young with you, to make them afraid to approach an age you never got to, that you were supposed to get to first.
In Japan, a young girl published an essay on Cobain’s voice. A rough translation states:
Cobain’s voice houses more than one voice. This magic of voice is most clearly deciphered on the Unplugged album. I could find enough levels in Kurt Cobain’s voice to live satisfied, but the rest of my family wasn’t as fortunate
.
The text goes on to question the structural makeup of Cobain’s throat. Does it contain pebbles or kernels that rumble along? Would the writer try to communicate with Cobain if he had not left his body behind as evidence? Does one assist a dead musician by covering his songs?
A cover is a new rendition of a previously recorded song. Usually, the original recording is regarded as the definitive version and all others lesser competitors, alternates, or tributes. Songs have been covered since the first melody hummed in the presence of another. Monkeys covered songs way before they lost the hair. Adam and Eve used to sing while they had sex in streams. Crickets sure sing similar and leaves have a song, birds, thunder claps are a kind, not so popular or pleasing, but everyone has their music. Different car engines sound good together. An airplane duets nicely with a lawnmower. Music proves one of the most exciting and accessible art forms to cover. A number of literary covers have been produced by a junior high English class, the text only differing in handwriting. Historical recreations, for example, Civil War reenactments could be considered covers, but those wars are fake. A cover song holds all qualities that define a song; a cover song is definitely
real.
One can argue, as the text here is about to, a cover version makes a song
more
real, alive even, since changing the form calls attention to the original, shows the song is still identifiable as the song, even with different qualities.
Some turn into dance songs, “Always on My Mind,” for instance, sung first by Brenda Lee, popularized by Elvis, then re-covered by Willie Nelson, then turned dance by the Pet Shop Boys. Newly-turned dance covers sound careless, freed from their gloom by immortal beats. These beats keep going after the song has stopped. Beat-making machines have no
off
button. They must be stuffed in pillows, in closets, in sheds, buried in backyards, until the beat is needed once again.
Does a cover unleash the song? One that’s been called the best, Hendrix completely outgunning a Dylan original, throwing it far from Bob’s scratchy so-so. John Coltrane rescues “My Favorite Things” from the original
The Sound of Music
version. His meandering jazz masterpiece weaves in and out of melody, trilling notes out of control, and all the while the listener has the other prim version in her head. No one sings lyrics in Coltrane’s version. They are offered by the song’s ghost. Coltrane’s melody calls to mind the kittens and string. Then the instruments storm, there are hundreds of cats, way too much string.
Digital appropriation can be a form of 4th-dimensional rape, as in the mash-up of Ludacris’s “What’s Your Fantasy” and Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head.” The combination of the two, referred to as “Can’t lick you out of my head,” puts Kylie’s backing dance beat over Ludacris’s dark questioning keyboard, transforming Ludacris’s lyrics into a seduction. All that’s left of Kylie’s voice is her girlish “la-la-la” chorus and it’s being used against her. Anonymous assault is common, comparable to Photoshop scandal, the cut and paste from one online chat to another, but
incomparable
to the questionable assault of Kobe Bryant upon Unnamed:
We stood right here and started having the you know,
the foreplay happened right here . . . the hug goodbye
thing or whatever . . . we just started kissing. I asked her I
said you know, she bent over, and walked over on her own
free will . . . put her foot up here all by herself and if that
wasn’t consensual . . . Did she cry, no . . . She didn’t cry
at all . . . I didn’t say she slipped off, she just you know removed
herself from . . . I said she slid off . . . Slid off like
when uh, that was it and I stood there like this and uh you
know, put it back in my pants so you know, that was it no
more no nothing . . . She kissed goodbye. Boom . . . I put
my thing back in my pants when I was through and she . . .