‘The beginning’ is not an easy thing to visualize when it comes to the creation of the world.

Philosophers have at various times followed Aristotle in speculating that there was some sort of primal matter before God shaped from it the forms of lands, trees, animals, and even humans. Christian theologians have argued that if God was there to create the world, then he necessarily existed before the world did and created ‘the essence with the form’ (Basil, Hexaemeron 2.3).

Medieval theories of the creation of the world were made not only by theologians using medieval logic but by scholars of ‘natural philosophy’ relying on scientific texts transmitted from antiquity and translated into Latin from the original Greek or Arabic. The Arabicizing script in the frontispiece of the moralized Bible echoes this presence of Arabic science—something that was revered in western Europe at the time.

Equally revered was Plato’s Timaeus—among the most important texts employed to theorize creation. The book was the only Platonic dialogue available in Latin in the early Middle Ages and was regarded by writers such as Calcidius (fourth century), Thierry of Chartres (c.1100–c.1150), and William of Conches (c.1090/1091–c.1155/1170s) as the scientific parallel to the theological account of creation offered by the book of Genesis. As the most influential scientific explanation of creation in the European realm, the importance of the Timaeus, traditionally accompanied by a medieval Latin commentary, rivalled that of the biblical tradition.

The Timaeus was central to the crucial medieval debate on how God created the world. The text describes how the divine artifex, in accordance with mathematical conventions, created the four elements—fire, air, water, and earth—out of primordial matter (prima materia), which was in a chaotic, amorphous state, lacking all comprehensible form. The four elements then conjoined to create the world, and they continue to reside in each thing created by God, human or non-human.

In the illuminated Bible moralisée frontispiece God is shown generating the world out of just such primordial matter while seated outside it.

Michelangelo suggests a swirling primordial substance that is comparable to that in the manuscript illumination, but his God seems almost to be embroiled in the creation he seeks to form.

Giovanni di Paolo’s predella panel is different again. It is like the manuscript illumination in depicting a God who operates from ‘outside’ the world when creating it, but it seems to spring into being in perfect wholeness and order at a mere touch.

In the late fourth century, Basil of Caesarea wrote of the difference between divine creation (which is out of nothing—ex nihilo) and human creation:

Here below arts are subsequent to matter—introduced into life by the indispensable need of them. Wool existed before weaving…. Wood existed before carpentering took possession of it…. But God, before all those things that now attract our notice existed … imagined the world such as it ought to be and created matter in harmony with the form that he wished to give it. (Hexaemeron 2.2)

Despite such admonitions, it is not surprising that artists in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were attracted to make comparisons. They would have seen something particularly engaging in the problem of how to represent the divine creator since they themselves were also in the act of creating a world. Elements of this parallel are clearly visible in all three works in this exhibition. In the frontispiece to manuscript 1179, God is shown organizing the swirling cosmic matter on his lap by brandishing a compass, the tool for mathematical calculation used by many medieval artistic creators to impose order on the blank page. The God of Giovanni di Paolo’s painting, clearly distinct from his creation, embodies an artist’s capacity to stand back from his work, whether to appraise it or direct others to admire it. Meanwhile in Michelangelo’s fresco in the Sistine Chapel, God strains with raised arms to push light from darkness in a motion akin to the human endeavour of ceiling painting.

We may, therefore, conclude that when conceptualizing the first scene in the Old Testament, artists are confronted, on the one hand, with the need to visualize things that traditionally cannot be visualized (God in an amorphous realm and primary matter that is without any form) and, on the other, with the attraction of depicting God as like a struggling artist himself, attempting to make a world that does not yet exist—a very human role that mirrored their own.

The task of the artist rendering this subject matter was difficult and important: their artistic creations justified not only their own position and livelihood in this world but also the world order and the everlasting presence of God, the divine artist.  

References

Glass, Dorothy F. 1982. ‘In principio: The Creation in the Middle Ages’, in Approaches to Nature in the Middle Ages: Papers of the Tenth Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, ed. by Lawrence D. Roberts (Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies), pp. 67–104

Rudolph, Conrad.1999. ‘In the Beginning: Theories and Images of Creation in Northern Europe in the Twelfth Century’, Art History, 22: 3–55

Schaff, Philip and Henry Wace (eds). 1895. ‘St Basil, Letters and Select Works, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 8 (New York: The Christian Literature Company)

Zahlten, Johannes. 1979. Creatio Mundi: Darstellungen der sechs Schöpfungstage und naturwissenschafliches Weltbild im Mittelalter (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta)