The Cross and Creation in Christian Liturgy and
Art
Christopher Irvine
SPCK (Alcuin Club Collections 88) £19.99
(978-0-281-06908-8)
Church Times Bookshop £18 (Use code
CT195 )
AROUND 1608, the Bolognese painter Ludovico Carracci (1555-1619)
was commissioned for the large canvas (62 ins × 88 ins) Christ
in the Wilderness Served by Angels. The choice of subject is
uncommon, and the iconography is strikingly unusual.
Jesus is shown standing in front of a rocky mountain pass
overgrown with trees. Behind him is spread a long table with a
white linen tablecloth, on which is set a cup of wine and a bread
roll. Other gifts are being brought to the table. One angel holds a
basin in front of him, while another pours water over his fingers
from a ewer. Two behind him hold out a white towel for him to dry
his hands.
In Gallery XV of the Berlin Gemäldegalerie, this painting seems
wildly out of place. The Cecco del Caravaggio next to it, of
Christ Driving out the Moneychangers, is at least more
immediately recognisable, but what is the non- scriptural scene in
the wilderness meant to suggest, and why was it commissioned?
Christopher Irvine, who does not discuss this particular
painting, brilliantly breathes liturgical life into similar
paintings and sculptures by taking them from galleries and museums
and demonstrating their original purpose. This is a welcome
follow-up to his 2005 book The Art of God, making clear
how art is used to make places sacred, besides becoming sacred by
being brought into churches. The book is fittingly offered as a
gift to mark the 40th anniversaries of ordination of two priests
with whom he has long worked, at Mirfield and in the Close at
Canterbury.
The author uses the range of images for the cross, whether as
the tree of life or as the tree of victory, the noble tree and the
tree of shame, to chart the liturgy and spread of Christian
theology in both the West and Eastern traditions. He leaves us to
guess that one cause of the bare cross was the Iconoclastic period
in Late Antiquity, but writes as fluently of the Ethiopic tradition
as of the Celtic.
Although he discusses earlier images, the emphasis of the book
is on the period after Charlemagne when the cross and the eucharist
first became linked. This allows for a discussion of the
development of the reredos and retable; rood screens are mentioned
in passing.
Fonts, as the origin of the Christian community and as
signifiers of paradise restored, are crucial to this account. The
font from the basilica of St Felix, Kélibia, which is now in the
Bardo Museum in Tunis, turns out to be a memorial to St Cyprian,
the African bishop and church writer who died in 258 on the day
later celebrated as Holy Cross Day, an observance of which Irvine
writes extensively.
Besides many sacred works of art from Fra Angelico to Norman
Adams, he draws on The Dream of the Rood and the poetry of
George Herbert, but somewhat inexplicably omits Donne's great poem
"The Crosse" - which was probably written at the same time as
Carracci was painting in Rome - in which the word itself is
repeated more than in any other English poem.
Canon Irvine has chosen publication with a learned society. A
more diligent editor would have known that James VI and I could
never have heard Bishop Andrewes preach at Whitechapel; would have
been able to harmonise the Anglicisation of church dedications (St
Gall but Santa Maria Antiqua, St Clemente, and San Clemente); and
should have provided for a more extensive list of selected
artworks.
The exiguous index needs overhauling. Mary Carruthers
(precisely) appears, but not Emperor Heraclius, Macarius, or the
Queen of Sheba. One might imagine that Dom Gregory Dix had not even
been consulted.
A revised second edition might place the book where it ought to
find its much deserved readership if it was fully illustrated. Time
and time again as I read, I needed to remind myself, by going to
other books and histories, which particular mosaic or picture was
being so beautifully described and interpreted for me.
In the case of the Carracci painting (which can be found on the
Google Art Project, or the home page for the Berlin museums), a
priest preparing to say mass would have found it in a sacristy near
the vesting chest.
Immediately after his baptism, Jesus was taken into the
wilderness of temptation and was ministered to by angels. Priests
know all too well the profound sense of being alone, and of
celebrating the commonness of our baptism. Where once Jesus
prepared to offer himself as the self-immolating sacrifice, priests
offer the gifts of creation after a period of wilderness prayer and
silence.
Priests and lay people reading this book will be both
spiritually encouraged and liturgically informed, as they find more
meaning in the matrix of communicative signs and symbols that
abound in places used for worship.
The Revd Dr Nicholas Cranfield is the Vicar of All Saints',
Blackheath, in south London.