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Willem de Poorter

St Paul and St Barnabas at Lystra, 1636, Oil on panel, 54.61 x 80.01 cm, Minneapolis Institute of Art; The Walter H. and Valborg P. Ude Memorial Fund, 2011.13, Minneapolis Institute of Art Open Access

Ambrosius Francken I

Paul and Barnabas of Cyprus Chosen as Apostles by the Holy Spirit, 17th century, Oil on panel, 255.2 x 116.5 cm, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp), The History Collection / Alamy Stock Photo

Unknown English after Raphael

The Blinding of Elymas the Sorcerer, c.1626–36, Woven silk and wool tapestry with gilt-metal and silver-wrapped thread, 510 x 695 cm, The Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 1922, Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020

Of Sermons, Saints, and the Spirit

Comparative Commentary by

Artists have responded to those episodes in the Acts of the Apostles that have obvious drama (while tending to focus more on the first half of the book than on the further missionary journeys of Paul in the second). The portions of Acts that recount preaching, however, seem on the face of it to be less amenable to depiction in art. It is difficult to make the depiction of a sermon visually gripping—although there are some notable paintings of apostles in full homiletic flow: of Peter by Masolino and Filippino Lippi at Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence, for instance, and of Paul at Athens by Raphael in the same Acts of the Apostles series as the Blinding of Elymas.

If we examine the content of the preaching recorded in Acts, however, we find that much of it is easily visualized. The apostles did not mainly preach about ideas, but about events—about happenings and history—and that we can show in art. A good example is a passage from Acts 13–14 not otherwise covered in this exhibition: Paul’s sermon in the synagogue in Antioch in Pisidia (13:16–43). The events and characters he invokes there all find their place in visual culture: the Exodus, and David the Son of Jesse, for instance, as well as the figure of John the Baptist. And pride of place in Paul’s sermon (as in all the preaching in Acts) goes to the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, which is a yet more central theme in Christian art.

One of the chief features of Acts 13–14 is the prominence of Barnabas. However, he is not so significant a figure in the history of art as he is in this crucial early period of the Church’s development. In the two chapters treated here, Barnabas begins as the main protagonist, listed ahead of Paul in Acts 13:1, 2, 7. Over the course of these two chapters, the balance in the story shifts towards Paul (as does the order of names, for the most part) but, even then, Barnabas is given credit for Paul’s growing stature. It was Barnabas who had vouched for Paul to apprehensive Christians, whose knowledge of Paul (or Saul) was as their persecutor (Acts 9:26–27), and it was Barnabas who had sought Paul out and brought him to Antioch (Acts 11:25–26).

In a recent survey of biblical scholarship on Barnabas, Bernd Kollmann has made the entirely plausible case that, ‘at the time of the Apostolic Council [in Acts 15], Barnabas unquestionably belonged among the five most important figures in early Christianity, who determined the fate of the Church’ (Kollmann 2004: 41). Here Kollmann is simply repeating Galatians 2:9, in which Paul himself, James (called the brother of the Lord), Peter (called Cephas), John (probably John the Son of Zebedee), and Barnabas are all singled out for special mention. Of these, Peter and Paul were to feature centrally in Christian art, as was John; this particular James, however, and Barnabas, have received far less attention.

When it comes to which figures artists have most often been commissioned to depict, much seems to turn on contingencies: the way Christian history has been told, where someone was buried (Peter in Rome, at the centre of the Western Church, or Barnabas in Cyprus, a less prominent location), even whether someone picked up a useful reputation as a heavenly patron. Invocation against the plague catapulted St Sebastian and St Roch to artistic prominence; patronage of hat-making did less for St James, or protection against hailstorms for St Barnabas. So, like the tapestry of the Blinding of Elymas, where Barnabas is partially concealed by a column and Paul commands the scene, we see Barnabas ‘decrease’ as Paul ‘increases’ (cf. John the Baptist’s relation to Jesus in John 3:30).

Such processes are not irreversible, however. Barnabas would have a new moment of artistic and architectural recognition in England with the missions and church building of the Victorians. Dedication of churches to this Apostle—as Son of Encouragement (Acts 4:36)—was popular for Oxford Movement (or Anglo-Catholic) work in slums and other areas of deprivation. This overlooked apostle came back into favour as a subject of art in churches.

The ultimate protagonist in the life of the Church, however, is the Holy Spirit, as is clearly seen in the book of Acts. Unlike the pagan gods whose statues lurk in the Mortlake tapestry and de Poorter’s painting, the Holy Spirit is made ‘visible’ indirectly, not in graven images but in the living words and deeds of those whom that Spirit animates and empowers. In that power, working through Barnabas and Paul, the world finds itself being transformed.

 

References

Kollmann, Bernd. 2004. Joseph Barnabas: His Life and Legacy, trans. by Miranda Henry (Collegeville: Michael Glazier Inc)

Kollmann, Bernd and W. Deuse (eds). 2007. Alexander Monachus: Laudatio Barnabae / Lobrede auf Barnabas (Turnhout: Brepols)

 

Next exhibition: Acts of the Apostles 14 Next exhibition: Acts of the Apostles 20:13–38