Holy, Holy, Holy

The Legend of Francis is a series of twenty-eight frescoes in the Upper Church of the Basilica of Saint Francis at Assisi, painted by Giotto and his workshop. They follow the official chronicle of the Life of Francis by St Bonaventure.

In the scene showing Francis’s stigmatization, Giotto’s depiction of the seraph seems to recall elements of the vision of Isaiah 6—particularly its six wings. But (as in Bonaventure’s account) the seraph here is the crucified Christ, and Christ is also the ‘burning coal’ who sanctifies Francis by marking him with his own wounds.

With a naturalism that would be much imitated, Giotto sets the life of the saint within recognizable and habitable spaces, a ‘theatre of life’ (Lunghi 1996: 65). This ‘everydayness’ in Giotto’s frescoes might seem quite different from Isaiah’s vision of the celestial throne of God. Isaiah 6 is set in the Temple while Giotto’s settings are remarkable in their familiar, earthly specificity. Yet Giotto’s approach may help us see that Isaiah’s own attention to God’s presence is not, in fact, a stepping outside of ordinary history. Yes, the seraphim of Isaiah 6 proclaim that the Lord’s glory fills the Temple, but it also spills ever outward, filling the whole world (v.3). God’s glory may be encountered anywhere. It can break into ‘theatres of life’ of all kinds and in all periods; today where you are, just as in medieval Italy.

Francis’s dynamic posture communicates something of the shock to the human creature of this divine in-breaking. He is in mid-motion, having dropped down onto his right knee. His upper body angles itself toward the seraph as it bursts onto the scene. Along with his curled fingers and his facial expression, this allows Giotto to distill in a single image the drama of his surprise. The fresco may offer us a theatre of life, but it is certainly still theatre—no less dramatic for the everydayness of its setting.

The presence of Francis’s halo, despite being a supernatural element, is integrated into Giotto’s naturalistic depiction without any sense of awkwardness or inappropriateness. Like the three ‘holies’ that ring out in Isaiah’s theophany, this halo shows God’s sanctity is manifest ‘on earth as in heaven’. It occurs within the scheme and movements of the natural order, as human and divine life are enfolded together in holy history.

References

Lunghi, Elvio. 1996. The Basilica of St Francis in Assisi (New York: Roadside Book Company)

Over the course of fourteen years, James Hampton slowly and privately constructed what would prove to be his only major artistic work: The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly. Hampton handcrafted The Throne from ‘found objects’: cardboard, plastic, discarded furniture, jelly jars and light bulbs, metallic foils, and purple paper (now faded to a light brown).

What might Hampton’s use of reclaimed and recycled ‘everyday’ objects help us see about Isaiah’s vision? How might ‘found art’ disclose a ‘found theology’: a theology of how the presence and glory of God is discovered in unfolding historical encounters (Quash 2013: xiv)? Much like the prophet Isaiah himself, these found objects, painfully ordinary, are taken up into a higher purpose, re-dressed, transformed, put to new work. The artist’s imagination and vision become like the seraph’s coal, both purifying and transforming the meaning and purpose of their objects.

The richness of Hampton’s vision lies precisely in the humility of its components; its humility is the source of its magnificence. Those who stand before it experience the glory of a God who humbles the proud and elevates and glorifies the humble. The collective components of The Throne, reworked by the artist, overwhelm the space in the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery, much like the robe of the LORD that fills the Temple in Isaiah’s vision (6:1).

Indeed, when The Throne was first discovered in that Washington DC garage, its glory exceeded the space, spilling out of its containment onto the sidewalk and the street, reminding us of Isaiah’s encounter with the glory of God which fills the entire earth (6:3).

The glory of God is ready to burst forth, finding and transforming ordinary people and common things. Hampton’s transforming vision raises the found to higher significance, similar to the way that Isaiah’s speech is not his own, but becomes a vessel for YHWH's voice. The found objects and the found prophet each offer up their own humble ‘Here I am—send me’.

References

Quash, Ben. 2013. Found Theology: History, Imagination, and the Holy Spirit (London: Bloomsbury)

The centrepiece of Isaiah 6 is a question and an answer. God asks, ‘Whom shall I send?’ and Isaiah answers with a phrase that comes up repeatedly in the biblical story, harking back to the words of Abraham, of Jacob, and of Samuel: ‘Here I am’ (hineni) (v.8).

This phrase captures a particular spiritual attitude of availability and receptivity to the command of God, countering the attitude of Adam and Eve who hid from God’s presence. How does one capture the spiritual attitude expressed in this phrase—what the French spiritual masters called disponibilité—in visual form?

Rowan LeCompte’s depiction of Isaiah represents the attitude well. His image of the prophet in the right-hand of the two central lancets of this stained-glass window is strange and unsettling. Isaiah’s diagonal ascent of some gentle steps is interrupted by a far starker vertical summons as the cherub descends with its burning coal. Isaiah’s response is to fling his head dramatically backwards. This is a man in the process of realigning himself; opening himself to being reconfigured.

The thin verticality of LeCompte’s Isaiah, as well as of the window itself, and its location on the clerestory level of the cathedral, has an anagogical (upward-moving) effect, reminding us that the self-offering attitude of ‘Here I am’ involves a willingness to be drawn upward, expanded, unmade, and remade, by the voice of the Lord. Isaiah’s elongated body, stretched beyond normal human proportions, serves as an image of what the prophet must undergo if he is to speak the words of the Lord to Israel in the crisis of its judgement and exile. Not only his words, but his very being, will have to be stretched.

But we may not forget that prior to Isaiah saying ‘Here I am’, he first said, ‘Woe is me!’ (v.5). LeCompte manages to represent not only Isaiah’s disponibilité but also his fear and trembling at the vision of God in the way he poses Isaiah’s arms and hands. One hand seems self-protectively raised above his head to shield himself from the brilliance of God’s glory, even as the other is inquisitively and receptively open to both the seraph and his vocation.

Isaiah’s self-offering is inseparable from his humble realization that he is a ‘man of unclean lips’ (v.5) in need of purification from the seraph’s burning coal.