Subversive Horticulture

The renowned fifteenth-century Cretan iconographer Angelos Akotantos (d.1450) painted the icon Christ the Vine during a pivotal and turbulent period of the Church’s history. The collapse of the Byzantine Empire was imminent, leading to a contentious Church council in the cities of Ferrara and Florence (c.1438–45) where leaders strove to unify the Eastern and Western Church. Today, the icon is sequestered in a Cretan monastery; but, like all icons, many versions exist, including this one in the Byzantine Museum in Athens (Mantas 2003: 355–56).

The large figure of Christ with extended arms is seated at the nexus of the intertwined branches, establishing him as the common root and life of the Church (John 15:1–8). An open book, inscribed with excerpts from John 15, is superimposed on the Christ figure at the centre of the icon, suggesting the Word’s centrality. St Peter and St Paul, perhaps representing the two branches of the Church, East and West (Vassilaki 2013–14: 115), are prominently positioned on either side of Christ. They are seated higher than the other apostles while the evangelists sit to Christ’s immediate left and right, dialoguing in pairs. The remaining apostles, like Christ, hold open books and scrolls—their eyes fixed on him. The hanging fruit symbolizes the continuation of the faithful: as they abide in Christ so too he abides in them (John 15:4).

These direct, visual references to unity are built upon an indirect reference to another well-known type of image, The Tree of Jesse (twelfth century onwards). The latter depicts the lineage of Christ: it begins with King David’s father, Jesse, as its root (Isaiah 11:1); various prophets are its branches; and Mary and the Christ child appear at its centre. Such references to the Jesse Tree in the icon of Christ the Vine subtly suggest further layers of unity—not only between the branches of the divided Church, but also between the Church and Israel and thus between the Testaments, for it is as the ‘true vine’ of Israel (John 15:1) that Christ brings life to the Church (John 15:5).

This larger continuity between the Testaments makes a further claim on the Eastern and Western Church to remain united in obedience to Christ (John 15:9–10). ‘Love is the fulfilling of the law’ (Romans 13:10). Jesus shows what sacrifice such love must entail, for ‘greater love has no man than [that he] lay down his life for his friends’ (John 15:13). East and West, like Jesus’s first disciples, must love one another in a sacrificial existence if they are to be true branches of the true vine (John 15:12, 17).

References

Mantas, Apostolos G. 2003. ‘The Iconographic Subject “Christ the Vine” in Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Art’, Τόμος ΚΔ': 347–60

Vassilaki, Maria. 2013–14. ‘Cretan Icon-Painting and the Council of Ferrara/Florence (1438/39)’, ΜΟΥΣΕΙΟ ΜΠΕΝΑΚΗ: 115–28

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527–93) was an Italian Renaissance painter well-known for an innovative and imaginative style that incorporated a variety of objects like fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books. He is often heralded as the inspiration behind the twentieth-century avant-garde movement, Surrealism.

Vertumnus is named after the Roman god of the seasons—a god of metamorphoses and change—and is a portrait of the Habsburg emperor, Rudolf II. The painting seems absurd and playful in its grotesquery. But it may be trying to capture something more, as though telling a ‘serious joke’ (Kaufmann 2010: 199), for it is a reflection on the political situation of the Habsburg Empire at the time when it was painted. This exquisite cornucopia foretells a coming ‘golden age’ that is flush with plenitude. When we realize how the Habsburgs’ influence was expanding—evidenced here by the exotic renderings of fruits, flowers, and vegetables unattainable in continental Europe—we realize that this imperial portrait is no merely amusing fancy.

Arcimboldo’s Vertumnus brings into relief the metamorphosis Jesus’s followers will endure as the Gardener prunes and burns the branches that do not bear fruit (John 15:2–6). This process of change is intended to restore (John 15:3) and produce more fruit by the Spirit such that the Gardener is honoured and glorified (John 15:6–8).

What is this fruit? Why does it glorify the Father? Might its manifestation in the Christian life initially appear absurd (perhaps monstrous), while harbouring a deeper meaning and beauty that is disclosed to the discerning?

Jesus identifies this fruit as love, a love born counterintuitively through obedience and sacrifice. In the deeds of the disciples, this love glorifies the Father because it conforms to Jesus’s own love (John 15:9–12).

The manifestation of this fruit in the lives and faces of Jesus’s disciples is not merely for their benefit (John 15:11); rather, it is to be extended into and shared with the world. It is evidence of God’s Kingdom in the present and its future coming (John 15:15–17), where there will be plenitude, flourishing, and abundance—a true ‘golden age’ (Revelation 21–22).   

References

Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta. 2010. Arcimboldo: Visual Jokes, Natural History, and Still-Life Painting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press)

Tucker, Abigail. 2011. ‘Arcimboldo’s Feast for the Eyes, January 2011’, www.Smithsonianmag.com, [accessed 18 June 2019]

Award winning English sculptor John W. Mills, dubbed the ‘Sculptor to the Nation’ (Smith 2019), was commissioned by the Royal Mint in 1993 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the largest amphibious assault in history. In the wee hours of 6 June 1944, the seas and skies teemed with ships, landing crafts, planes, and over 150,000 soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy as part of Operation Overlord. Mills’s vivid recollection of that historic day as an impressionable young boy inspired his design of a coin to memorialize those who sought to liberate German occupied France and eventually all of Europe.

The commemorative, uncirculated coin is packaged in a ‘First Day Cover’, an envelope illustrated with a watercolour print depicting British soldiers landing on the beaches of Normandy. The Cover also has five stamps, postmarked with a date exactly fifty years to the day after D-Day. They capture scenes from that fateful day filmed by the Army Film and Photographic Unit and record, in sequence, the pre-dawn preparations, the heroic landings, and the gallant advance inland that would eventually liberate occupied France.

Perhaps memorializing such brave actions in this manner seems inappropriate as Allied soldiers lost much that day, whether their lives or their innocence, that cannot, like mass-produced coins and stamps, have a price put on them. Nevertheless, the uncirculated coins, the five post-marked stamps, and their First Day Covers commemorate the shared sacrifice of the fallen, denoting the love evident in ‘laying down one’s life for another’ (John 15:13).

The Church has often made glib, trite, and impertinent associations between its sense of sacrifice and the sacrifice of soldiers for country, sometimes losing sight of the means by and the ends for which Christ’s sacrifice was made (John 15:9–13). This conflation has led to attempts to advance the Kingdom of God, even today, by the sword, despite Jesus’s refusal to be identified as a militaristic Messiah (John 10:10).

As these commemorative coins ‘abide’ in their First Day Covers in uncirculated, mint condition, they seem to point forward as well as backward; not only honouring a memory, but also expressing longing for a day when there will be no more death, no more pain, or suffering (Revelation 21:4).

It is this Kingdom that is propagated in the present by the Spirit as the sent disciples ‘abide’ in Christ (John 15:5) while they also go and bear fruit, ‘fruit that will last’ (John 15:16).

References

Hastings, Max. 1984. Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy (New York: Simon & Schuster)

Smith, Chris Frazer. 2019. ‘Sculptor to the Nation’, ICAS Art Magazine, January–March 2019: 29–33