{"id":5704,"date":"2015-01-21T14:47:53","date_gmt":"2015-01-21T14:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=5704"},"modified":"2015-01-23T02:56:56","modified_gmt":"2015-01-23T02:56:56","slug":"titians-christ-the-humanist-and-the-adulteress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=5704","title":{"rendered":"Titian’s “Christ (the Humanist) and the Adulteress”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Fb-Button\"\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>
<\/fb:like><\/div>
<\/div><\/div>

\"Christ\"<\/p>\n

Titian, Christ and the Adulteress, 1508-10. courtesy Milwaukee art Museum<\/em><\/p>\n

My good friend Ann had me pegged as a pure\u00a0modernist partly for my obvious interest in
\nabstract art, which she saw\u00a0in much of\u00a0my own artwork done largely during my
\nundergraduate years.<\/p>\n

But my art interests, as with music, range far,\u00a0and I visited the Milwaukee Art Museum’s
\nrecently closed\u00a0Of Heaven and Earth: 500\u00a0<\/em>years of Italian Painting from\u00a0Glasgow Museums<\/em>,\u00a01<\/strong>\u00a0with great\u00a0anticipation. Well more than a
\nhandful of paintings impressed me, but notably\u00a0Sandro Botticelli’s\u00a0The Annunciation,<\/em>\u00a0Cavaliere\u00a0d’Arpino’s\u00a0<\/em>Archangel Michael and the Rebel<\/em>
\nAngels,<\/em>\u00a0Salvator Rosa’s magnificent paired historical landscapes
\nSt. John Baptist revealing Christ to the\u00a0<\/em>Disciples<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0St. John the Baptist<\/em>
\nBaptizing Christ in the Jordan<\/em>, Carlo Dolci’s\u00a0Salome<\/em>, Antonio Mancini’s\u00a0The<\/em>
\nSulky Boy,<\/em>\u00a0and Vincenzo Camuccini’s\u00a0Death\u00a0<\/em>of Julius Caesar, <\/em>each\u00a0showing the artist’s depth of involvement in his art,\u00a0wholly compelling as a\u00a0historical and cultural story.<\/p>\n

\"mary\"<\/p>\n

Botticelli, The Annunciation, oil, 1490-95.\u00a0Courtesy Milwaukee Art Museum\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

However, one painting utterly captivated me, above all.
\nAnd it has prompted more contemplation than\u00a0any single work of art I’ve seen in quite some\u00a0time: “Christ and the Adulteress” (c. 1508-10) by Titian\u00a0(Tiziano
\nVecellio).
\nIt possesses great intellectual challenge\u00a0for what it depicts and great
\nhumanity and beautiful mystery, for how it depicts.<\/p>\n

The show appears to have been curiously\u00a0undervalued by Midwestern critics, from what I’ve read.\u00a0I imagine resistance from the show’s extensive Christian subject matter especially\u00a0in a time of such religious and secular\u00a0polarization. Or perhaps the desire was for\u00a0more contemporary and “relevant” art.\u00a0One reviewer even commented that
\nthe extraordinary painting by Titian provided little more than a
\nshowcase of fine fabric.<\/p>\n

First of all, it’s hard for me to imagine this\u00a0great artist taking on such a subject as this painting\u00a0without striving for all the power, human
\ndrama and beauty he could muster.<\/p>\n

Titian’s work does radiate an array of\u00a0warm and cool textural splendor. But those
\nqualities reflect Titian’s sense of truth in\u00a0beauty, or beauty as truth.
\nAs a composition, this brims with eccentric\u00a0form, in the figures’ situation and
\ninteraction, and in how the shading and\u00a0shadows create uncertainty and even muffled
\ntension.<\/p>\n

Christ is seemingly seated, perhaps almost on\u00a0the ground and he reaches out from a dark
\ncorner to grab the arm of the Pharisee who\u00a0has apprehended the woman.The official had
\ntried to trap Christ into refusing to support\u00a0Mosaic law and demanded that the woman be
\nstoned to death.
\nWe know the story for the pointed eloquence\u00a0of Christ’s challenge:
\n‘Let he who hath not sinned, cast the first\u00a0stone.”
\nThis crucial moment helped seal Christ’s\u00a0human fate. Yet, he exhibits, among other
\nthings, an enlightened feminist perspective\u00a0because we know that an adulterous man in
\nJerusalem at the time hardly would be treated so.<\/p>\n

I see Christ as one of the great humanists of\u00a0his race, of history.
\nFrankly part of my motivation for writing\u00a0this is also disappointment in my
\nhaving invoked Christ in a couple of recent\u00a0blogs which received no responses, even given
\ntheir political subject matter — the\u00a0notorious recent police killings of unarmed
\nblack men, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s\u00a0recent “voice from God” telling him he must\u00a0run for president.
\nI fear that too many of both my close and\u00a0casual humanist friends — secular humanists
\nmore precisely — resisted the\u00a0contextualizing of socio-political matters
\nthat invoked such a religious figure as\u00a0Christ.<\/p>\n

But I believe, as I think Titian does in this\u00a0painting, that Christ was as great a human as
\nmodern history provides, regardless of whether he\u00a0was “the son of God.” A trope perhaps, but\u00a0true nonetheless.
\nMore to the point, he exemplified a human engaged in his time and society, the\u00a0political zealot, the determined dissenter.
\nThat’s the man I see in this painting, even\u00a0though Titian cannily cloaked him in the
\nsublime shadow he still deserves.<\/p>\n

For me, this was the single highlight of my\u00a0art-viewing year.\u00a0And this painting is such a stunning\u00a0experience because of how it radiates in
\nhuman breath its beauty and verity.\u00a0“Let he who hath not sinned cast the first
\nstone.”<\/p>\n

One of the clearest pronouncements\u00a0the man ever made also provides pause for
\nanyone reflecting on judgment of others. It\u00a0is not, however, saying “cast no judgment
\nwhen it is due.” Christ pulled the woman\u00a0aside and told her to “go and sin no more.”
\nHe judged her a sinner, but forgave her and\u00a0administered the most fundamental of
\npenances.<\/p>\n

Another intrigue: This foreshadows Christ’s\u00a0relationship with Mary of Magdalene, whom the
\ngospels characterize as a harlot, thus\u00a0doubling up on his evident mercy towards
\nunholy women, which certainly could have been\u00a0partially carnal attraction, on his part.
\nMary Magdalene is the archetypal human sinner\u00a0in Christ’s personal life and she’s so
\novercome with gratitude for his mercy and\u00a0love that she returns it, following him to his
\ncrucifixion and grieving there with his\u00a0mother.
\nOf course, pop culture’s most recent “bible,”\u00a0The Da Vinci Code,<\/em> bases its story on the
\npremise that Christ not only married\u00a0Magdalene but survived the crucifixion and
\nraised a family. The evidence for this still\u00a0appears quite dubious.<\/p>\n

But who’s to say\u00a0today? He may have given his life for Mary as\u00a0much as for all. He was a man and I think\u00a0most heterosexual men need a woman to inspire\u00a0them, to make them better, as women like to\u00a0think. The delicious irony is that a sinful\u00a0woman could inspire such a holy man.<\/p>\n

That partly explains the inspired moment in Titian’s telling of this painting’s story. The
\nadultress has no idea that this mysterious, kind and\u00a0political man might spare her\u00a0execution, as the painter shows us in her\u00a0abject, despairing face and hands. Her true
\njudge determines she has suffered human-administered penance enough, unlike those
\nresponsible for the Great Recession, who\u00a0received “absolution but no penance”, as
\nCharles Pierce wrote in a January Esquire<\/em>\u00a0article about Barack Obama and America today.<\/p>\n

Finally, as I’ve alluded to, the depiction of Christ himself is a masterpiece of deft
\nunderstated evocation.\u00a0His arm is oak-branch firm, as if reaching out
\nfrom heavy undergrowth — to stop the\u00a0Pharisee in his tracks, a sort of force of
\nhuman nature. Also the entwining extension and\u00a0contortion of Christ’s body adds up to a
\nsuperbly paradoxical configuration, a way of\u00a0balancing composition that is filled with
\ngrace and yet forthright and assertive.\u00a0His head is magnificently shadowed and he
\nremains a man of abiding mystery. The\u00a0painting’s asymmetry and peek-a-boo handling
\nof space are quite modernist.<\/p>\n

Most of all, I see Christ the road preacher\u00a0as a great humanist. If the painting has the
\nhint of romance, it speaks to a\u00a0question that Leon Wieseltier addressed in
\nhis essay in the January 18 book review of\u00a0The New York Times titled “Among the
\nDisrupted.”\u00a0He began by commenting on how “the greatest
\nthugs in the history of the culture industry\u00a0have destroyed our bookstores and
\nrecord stores” and refers of course to “all\u00a0the miracles of electronic dissemination,” and
\nhow “writers hover between decent poverty and\u00a0an indecent one; they are expected to render\u00a0the fruits of their labors for little and\u00a0even for nothing.” And “all the technological
\nmiracles somehow do not suffice for\u00a0compensation, either the fiscal or the
\nspiritual kind.” Weiseltier bemoans, in a\u00a0cool, almost Olympian manner, the
\nquantification of quality, among other\u00a0problems that the digital revolution has
\nengendered.
\nBut his greater subject the looming fate of\u00a0humans. He asserts that, “For a start,
\nhumanism is not the antithesis of religion,” something Pope Francis is now superbly
\ndemonstrating.
\nDefying much rusty dogma, the current Pope is\u00a0doing a pretty damn good impersonation of\u00a0Christ, as any Pope should strive to. And he\u00a0does it with the unlikely humility that
\nChrist exhibited.<\/p>\n

And Wieseltier’s closing speaks superbly to\u00a0this question of humanism which articulates
\nitself as romance, in the subtext of Christ\u00a0and Mary Magdalene, or in his ready grace-
\ngiving to the adulteress.<\/p>\n

“Is all this — is humanism — sentimental?
\nBut sentimentality is not always a\u00a0counterfeit emotion. Sometimes sentimental is
\nwarranted by reality. The persistence of humanism\u00a0through the centuries, in the face a
\nformidable intellectual and social obstacles,\u00a0has been owed to the truth of its
\nrepresentations of our complexly beating\u00a0hearts, and to the guidance that it has
\noffered, and its variegated and conflicting\u00a0versions, for a soulful, sensitive existence.
\nThere is nothing soft about the quest for a\u00a0significant life. And a complacent humanist
\nis a humanist who was not read his books\u00a0closely, since they teach disquiet and
\ndifficulty.
\n“In a society rife with theories and\u00a0practices that flatten and shrink and chill
\nthe human subject, the humanist is the\u00a0dissenter.”<\/p>\n

And in Titian’s wondrous painting, Christ the\u00a0great humanist dwells in subversive shadows,\u00a0an authentic dissenter against hidebound,\u00a0oppressive morality.
\nAs he was throughout his public life, which\u00a0Reza Aslan makes abundantly clear in his
\nprovocative book Zealot: The Life and Times\u00a0of Jesus Christ of Nazareth<\/em> which I
\nrecently referenced a couple of times,\u00a0apparently to the dismay of some silent\u00a0humanists. Aslan is not alone: an unacknowledged prototype\u00a0for his book is Jesus the Heretic: Freedom<\/em>
\n in Bondage in a Religious World<\/em> by Douglas\u00a0Lockhart. That book offers a more in-depth
\nreading of traditional Christian teachings\u00a0but identifies Christ’s as a man who told the
\nmost uncomfortable religious and political\u00a0truths of his time.
\nThe Romans crucified him as a heretic. In his\u00a0time, this disrupted man disrupted right
\nback.<\/p>\n

_______________<\/p>\n

1. \u00a0I regret not having seen and written about this show earlier. But it will run from February 6 to May 3 at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California, under a somewhat more secular title: Botticelli, Titian and Beyond: Italian Masterpieces from the Glasgow Museums.<\/em><\/p>\n

The show catalog is available at the Milwaukee Art Museum www.mam.org<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Titian, Christ and the Adulteress, 1508-10. courtesy Milwaukee art Museum My good friend Ann had me pegged as a pure\u00a0modernist partly for my obvious interest in abstract art, which she saw\u00a0in much of\u00a0my own artwork done largely during my undergraduate … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-1u0","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5704"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5731,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5704\/revisions\/5731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}