Picturing the Apocalypse by Natasha and Anthony O’Hear, Oxford University Press, 333pp, £12.99
As Natasha and Anthony O’Hear argue, many of the images and symbols contained within the Book of Revelation possess the “vividness and potency of dreams”. As such, they can be terribly enigmatic, so representing them artistically, moving beyond the confines of language, opens up alternative routes towards understanding.
This, at any rate, is what Christians have been trying to do for centuries – in medieval manuscripts, altarpieces, woodcuts and many other media. The O’Hears take us on a fascinating, sumptuously illustrated journey through this crowded history, from tapestries in 14th-century France to the illustrations of Blake, and from Van Eyck to Max Beckmann in the trenches of the First World War.
Nine well-known images from Revelation’s rich cast of characters and symbols are discussed, and you’ll quickly lose count of the valuable insights provided by the O’Hears. When we simply read the biblical text, for example, it is easy to forget that John’s vision is continually being brought to him by angelic messengers. When you portray the story in a painting, however, the angels are allowed to remain at centre stage. This not only hammers home an important point, it also offers a reminder of a “world neither controlled by us nor, more fundamentally, constituted by us”. Sometimes we need the angels.
One of the book’s themes is the mutability of the way Revelation is represented through the ages. Whenever I think of the four horsemen, for example, I have Dürer’s famous image in my mind’s eye: the ferocious riders side by side, trampling all-comers under foot. It turns out, however, that in earlier centuries the horsemen tended to be depicted separately and could sometimes appear “almost serene”.
We’ve also become accustomed, since the late medieval period, to an increasingly “condensed style” in which the whole book is contained within a few images or even a single snapshot which attempts to “stand for the meaning of the whole text”. Our forebears took a more expansive approach, deploying dozens of episodic images.
This can readily be glimpsed in medieval manuscripts and, perhaps most spectacularly, in the Angers apocalypse tapestry, produced for Louis of Anjou (brother to the French king) in the late 14th century. It is 400 feet long, 15 feet high, and walking through its 84 individual scenes is, the O’Hears tell us, “like walking through Revelation itself”.
At heart, Picturing the Apocalypse is a work of reception history and it quotes the theologian Ulrich Luz with approval: biblical texts are not reservoirs with fixed amounts of water, but natural sources from which new streams of interpretation are always emerging. This appears to hold true for, inter alia, the Seven Seals, the New Jerusalem, and the Woman Clothed with the Sun. But nothing quite compares with the constant reinventions and recruitments of the Whore of Babylon. Luther hating the papacy, liberation theologies grumbling about oppressive regimes, free-wheelers denouncing capitalism, take your pick – the Whore has always been available as a symbol of what you most despise.
Deeper still is the perennial tension between literal readings of Revelation, which descry a precise chronology of events in the real world, and the more spiritual analyses which have been doing good business ever since Augustine. This is just one of the reasons why Revelation has often been a divisive book. Some readers, the O’Hears explain, have found it unpalatable, blaming it for the emergence of extremist theologies or harmful political fantasies. Others have celebrated it as a way to encapsulate the Christian message of humility, endurance and reward.
One thing’s for sure: any attempt to grasp how the symbols of Revelation have been used, abused and perused is greatly enhanced by tracing their artistic legacy. Sometimes this provides “deeper illumination and engagement than grappling with their theological meaning in a more academic way”. This book’s dozens of illustrations, including 53 full-colour plates, amply demonstrate the point. We’re also reminded that, on occasion, not even the malleable resources of visual representation can fully capture Revelation’s complex, contested symbols. When you paint the Lamb, you really have to choose between portraying him as passive or strong, stressing his sacrifice or his triumph.
As the O’Hears wisely conclude, Revelation has always boasted a potency beyond the borders of religious devotion. Perhaps this study’s most intriguing section deals with how Revelation sustains such a central role in modern culture. It creeps into everything from films to computer games, from Johnny Cash to Messiaen, and even crops up in that indispensable cultural bellwether, The Simpsons. Armageddon is heading for Springfield in one episode and, with the end of the world in sight, Homer expresses winningly mundane regrets: “I never used those pizza tokens.” A final “D’oh!” before Doomsday.
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