Come and See

The Ecumenical Council, by Salvador Dalí

John 1:40–51

Commentaries by Amanda M. Burritt

Works of art by Antonio Ciseri, Arthur Boyd and Salvador Dalí

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What Do We Behold?

Commentary by Amanda M. Burritt

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Antonio Ciseri’s Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) depicts the moment when Pilate presents Jesus to the crowd who will apparently decide his fate (John 19:5; Matthew 27:15–17). As viewers, we see much of what Jesus sees; we are behind him, looking out from the balcony as he does.

The dramatic composition recalls a theatrical set in which costumes, architecture, and dramatic gestures represent the authority of Rome. Symbols of power are everywhere: in the monumental columns; the throne chair over which is draped the skin of a cheetah; the military standard and the uniformed guards; the togas of the men and the elegant drapery of the women. This physical power and imposing grandeur contrasts with the half-naked, human body of Jesus which is about to be beaten and broken.

When Ciseri painted this work in the second half of the nineteenth century, Europe was witnessing profound intellectual challenges to long-held beliefs. For instance, controversial literary works sought to reveal the truth of the historical Jesus (Ciseri’s depiction was influenced by Ernest Renan’s Vie de Jesus (1863), which denied Jesus’s divinity). Truth was sought in radical scientific theories and in the evidence of material culture revealed by archaeologists. In seeking to evoke a powerful historical context, Ciseri includes the Roman Column of Antoninus Pius and monumental structures evoking Egyptian architecture.

The crowd is invited to come and see Jesus (John 1:46) but what do they see? They see the power of Rome; they do not perceive the power of God. Pilate’s wife turns away; hers is the only face in the composition that is turned in our direction. We do not properly see the face of Jesus or of Pilate.

Pilate’s wife does not support what is happening to ‘that innocent man’. Paradoxically, her not looking evidences the fact that she has, in a dream, seen more than the others (Matthew 27:19). Truth is revealed to her through a medium beyond the physical, a truth those who are physically present cannot discern. To truly see Jesus is to see the connection between heaven and earth (John 1:51).

References

Video. ‘The monumental “Ecce Homo” by Antonio Ciseri’, www.uffizi.it, available at https://www.uffizi.it/en/video/the-monumental-ecce-homo-by-antonio-ciseri [accessed 3 October 2024]

The Reality Beyond

Commentary by Amanda M. Burritt

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Large and complex, Salvador Dalí’s Ecumenical Council is a fusion of science, mysticism, and Catholicism. It references the optimistic meeting between Pope John XXIII and the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1960. In this period Dalí began to perceive an interconnectedness of all things revealed through both science and religion. After the first atomic bomb had been dropped, Dalí’s initial fear gave way to a fascination with science. In his Manifesto Mystique (1951), he wrote of the ‘metaphysical spirituality of the substantiality of quantum physics’ (Gott 2009: 247) saying ‘for the first time in the history of science, physics was providing proof of the existence of God’ (ibid: 303).

In the Ecumenical Council heaven breaks into physical reality, as sky and rocks meet, and physical forms shimmer and dematerialize into their atomic parts, transfused with a mystical light. Dalí’s God the Father is modelled on Christ in Michelangelo’s Last Judgement but unlike the Son, the Father does not allow his face to be seen. The figure of Christ appears to be dematerialising. The Holy Spirit is represented by the traditional dove and by a human form withdrawing beyond the physical realm.

Dalí's painting urges questions on us that are similar to those raised by John’s Gospel. What can, or should, we assume can be seen of God? What can we see? The disciples in John’s Gospel see the incarnate Jesus (1:45). And even though the full mystery of the trinitarian God is beyond physical sight, yet that Godhead is spiritually present in the one on whom the Holy Spirit (1:33) and angels (1:51) descend.

The cross held by Christ forms the apex of a triangle. At the base of the triangle is Dalí’s muse, Gala, in the guise of St Helena holding the ‘true cross’, which, according to legend, she discovered on a Holy Land pilgrimage.

The image poses questions. Like the disciples (1:46), do we believe because we see? Do we believe because we are told (1:50)? Do we believe what we expect to see? Do we have faith to believe that which we cannot see?

For Dalí, as for many of the painters who inspired him, there is a reality to be seen beyond the physical form.

References

Gott, Ted (ed.). 2009. Salvador Dali: Liquid Desire (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria)

The Crucified One

Commentary by Amanda M. Burritt

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In Crucifixion, Shoalhaven, Arthur Boyd effects a transposition of traditional Christian iconography by placing his Christ figure in the Australian landscape. His striking and confronting image depicts a woman crucified in the middle of the Shoalhaven River in New South Wales. The painting is a simple and immensely powerful composition focused on three horizontal bands of sky, land, and water.

Water can be a liminal place between the known and the unknown, the physical and the spiritual. It is also a source and sign of life. In the original act of creation, the Spirit of God hovers over the chaotic primeval waters to bring order and engender all life (Genesis 1).

In Crucifixion, Shoalhaven the viewer’s eye is drawn to the figure at the centre with her head hung low. Her wildly outstretched fingers blend into the trees of the ancient landscape. In her face, which is conjured by two dark slashes and no defined features, agony is expressed. She is vulnerable, isolated, abandoned; there is no one at the foot of her cross.

The crucified one is a female figure, yet she embodies a condition that goes beyond the distinctiveness of gender. She represents both the crucified incarnate Christ and all suffering humanity. Boyd said he did not want to represent suffering ‘by allowing just the male to be seen’ (Crumlin 1988: 158).

The location was also shocking. Like Nathanael asking ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ (John 1:46), one with a colonial gaze asks: can anything good come out of this alien wilderness and its ancient peoples? Yet—as he ponders how the Western Christian tradition is both imposed on the Australian context and subverted by it—Boyd sees the complexly-interrelated diversity of a wider humanity. Like the indigenous people, the trees and animals suffer a type of crucifixion in the name of a new civilization.

The imposition of a non-indigenous tradition is displayed, yet through it there is represented here an experience and a hope that cross cultural and historical boundaries—suffering, redemption, and abundant life. This crucifixion may be terrible, but it is a moment in time which will soon be transcended. This is the possibility that Boyd invites the viewer to ‘come and see’ (John 1:46).

References

Crumlin, Rosemary. 1988. Images of Religion in Australian Art (Kensington: Bay Books)

Seeing Truth

Comparative commentary by Amanda M. Burritt

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This passage in John’s Gospel initially appears to be a narrative account of the way in which several of Jesus’s disciples—Andrew, Simon Peter, Philip, and Nathanael—initially met him and came to follow him. At one level, it is in these simple narrated events that they first ‘know’ him. Yet the Gospel suggests that there are also deeper levels to their ‘knowing’. A close reading suggests theological, epistemological, and ontological complexities.

The passage is preceded in John’s Gospel by the profound episode in which John the Baptist refers to Jesus as ‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’ and ‘the Son of God’ (John 1:29). It is followed by the wedding at Cana during which Jesus turns water into wine, demonstrating divine power over the physical properties of the natural world and revealing himself as something more than a wise teacher (John 2:11).

Central to John 1:40–51 is the issue of seeing and knowing. Philip invites Nathanael to ‘come and see’ (v.46). Jesus tells Nathanael he ‘saw’ him under the fig tree before Philip called him (v.48). When Nathanael responds to this with the declaration that Jesus is the ‘Son of God’ and ‘King of Israel’—in other words, the promised Messiah—Jesus tells him he will see ‘greater things’ (v.50).

John the Baptist clearly sees something in Jesus which initially Nathanael does not. Philip and Andrew saw Jesus as the one about whom ‘Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote’, the Messiah, the Anointed One (1:41, 45). Nathanael’s initial and immediate response is coloured by his prejudice, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’.

In their various responses, John 1:40-51 challenges us to examine the lens through which we interpret what we see. Assumptions and stereotypes can prevent true sight. Can Arthur Boyd’s woman on a cross in an Australian river represent the Christ who was incarnated as a man in first-century Palestine? Can Antonio Ciseri’s half-naked captive have greater power than the might of Rome? Can a physical body reveal the inner spirit? Is true reality a dimension beyond human sight, as Salvador Dalí’s mystical understanding of nuclear physics would suggest? ‘You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man’ (v.51). In John’s Gospel, Jesus is the ever-present connection between heaven and earth, physical and metaphysical.

The passage in John’s Gospel invites its hearers, or readers, to come and see. Boyd, Ciseri, and Dalí show us that we might not be prepared for what we see when we look deeply, when we move beyond our prejudices, assumptions, and preconceptions. Boyd subverts gender expectations when he presents a Christ figure in the form of a woman. He places her in an ancient land with a deep and abiding spirituality, understood by its indigenous peoples and by all who can truly discern. Yet for colonial settlers, it is an empty, alien, and frightening land; a wilderness to be tamed. Boyd tasks us to see that all peoples and all lands are part of God’s creation. Ciseri offers us an exercise of earthly power which is soon to be subverted by one who reveals what true power is. Like the Gospel writer, Ciseri calls the viewer to ‘come and see’ Jesus.

Jesus said, ‘…for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth’ (John 18:37). Pilate’s question is timeless: ‘What is truth?’ (v.38). The writer of the Gospel of John, Antonio Ciseri, Arthur Boyd, and Salvador Dalí all provoke their audiences to ponder the question, what is the truth behind that which we see?

References

Byrne, Brendan. 2014. Life Abounding: A Reading of John’s Gospel (Strathfield: St Pauls Publications)

Next exhibition: John 3:1–15