DOI issue:
Nr. 2
DOI article:Gerat, Ivan: Zápasy s anjelom - ikonologické poznámky: k tradovaniu obrazovývch tém
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52804#0153
Fighting with an angel - iconological remarks
in the margin of pictorial traditions
(Summary)
The study is devoted to some problems of pictorial
topics, which are similar or were at least in some re-
spects related to each other.
Jacob’s fight with the angel, as depicted by Gau-
guin, provokes many questions. This theme,
a traditional metaphor of a search for God, was not
compatible with either naturalist or impressionist po-
etics. It was hardly an accident, that the painter aban-
doned those ways of seeing, thinking and painting just
when he struggled with this biblical topic. Neverthe-
less, the painter's way out of the then dominating par-
adigms of pictorial thinking, opened by this image,
did not lead further back to the biblical tradition, but
basically behind the traditional questions, spaces and
schémata of Judeo-Christian culture. His picture could
not perform the traditional functions of a religious
image within a Christian Community. It was not pre-
senting the story from the Old Testament within its
traditional setting, as Delacroix, is spite of ail his indi-
vidualism, painted some décades earlier.
For the French culture of the 19th Century, angels
were no longer suitable for présentation of above-indi-
vidual ideals. When solving similar pictorial tasks, e.g.
celebrating a nationally important battle by a sculpted
monument, the fighters were shown as inspired not by
the angels, but by allegorical figures, which continued
a visual tradition of antiquity without any explicit res-
toration of its religious messages.
Gauguin placed Jacob‘s fight with the angel in
the background of a composition, in which a con-
versation of rural women was depicted in the fore-
ground. The latter could even be perceived as consti-
tutive for the former. By this pictorial structure, the
painter introduced some more fundamental questions,
connected with the concept of populär superstition
as used in the elitist critique of religion such as that
of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nevertheless, an inspiration
by Nietzsche could also lead to a different resuit:
Hippolyte Delehaye was also a critically thinking elit-
ist, but he was using ail his forces to save the positive
messages of mediaeval hagiography. Similar elitism
might be criticized today, even by Jesuits, but it was
also known to mediaeval legends: as an example of
it, a passage from the classical biography of Saint
Martin by Sulpicius Severus is quoted, where mighty
armed angels helped the Saint in his fight against the
temple, which had become rich owing to a populär
superstition. Nevertheless, this important insight does
not mean, that the fighting angels in mediaeval leg-
ends were carrying only spiritual messages: in the third
part of the article, some examples from the lives of
Saint Venceslas of Bohemia and Saint Ladislas of
Hungary are discussed to illustrate some political in-
strumentalizations of the motif of the fighting angel
in the mediaeval pictorial narrative.
147
in the margin of pictorial traditions
(Summary)
The study is devoted to some problems of pictorial
topics, which are similar or were at least in some re-
spects related to each other.
Jacob’s fight with the angel, as depicted by Gau-
guin, provokes many questions. This theme,
a traditional metaphor of a search for God, was not
compatible with either naturalist or impressionist po-
etics. It was hardly an accident, that the painter aban-
doned those ways of seeing, thinking and painting just
when he struggled with this biblical topic. Neverthe-
less, the painter's way out of the then dominating par-
adigms of pictorial thinking, opened by this image,
did not lead further back to the biblical tradition, but
basically behind the traditional questions, spaces and
schémata of Judeo-Christian culture. His picture could
not perform the traditional functions of a religious
image within a Christian Community. It was not pre-
senting the story from the Old Testament within its
traditional setting, as Delacroix, is spite of ail his indi-
vidualism, painted some décades earlier.
For the French culture of the 19th Century, angels
were no longer suitable for présentation of above-indi-
vidual ideals. When solving similar pictorial tasks, e.g.
celebrating a nationally important battle by a sculpted
monument, the fighters were shown as inspired not by
the angels, but by allegorical figures, which continued
a visual tradition of antiquity without any explicit res-
toration of its religious messages.
Gauguin placed Jacob‘s fight with the angel in
the background of a composition, in which a con-
versation of rural women was depicted in the fore-
ground. The latter could even be perceived as consti-
tutive for the former. By this pictorial structure, the
painter introduced some more fundamental questions,
connected with the concept of populär superstition
as used in the elitist critique of religion such as that
of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nevertheless, an inspiration
by Nietzsche could also lead to a different resuit:
Hippolyte Delehaye was also a critically thinking elit-
ist, but he was using ail his forces to save the positive
messages of mediaeval hagiography. Similar elitism
might be criticized today, even by Jesuits, but it was
also known to mediaeval legends: as an example of
it, a passage from the classical biography of Saint
Martin by Sulpicius Severus is quoted, where mighty
armed angels helped the Saint in his fight against the
temple, which had become rich owing to a populär
superstition. Nevertheless, this important insight does
not mean, that the fighting angels in mediaeval leg-
ends were carrying only spiritual messages: in the third
part of the article, some examples from the lives of
Saint Venceslas of Bohemia and Saint Ladislas of
Hungary are discussed to illustrate some political in-
strumentalizations of the motif of the fighting angel
in the mediaeval pictorial narrative.
147