DOI Heft:
Część II. Sztuka późnośredniowieczna i wczesnonowożytna / Part II. Late Medieval and Early Modern Art
DOI Artikel:Sulikowska-Belczowska, Aleksandra: Ikony Jana Chrzciciela w kolekcji Muzeum Narodowego w Warszawie - ciało anioła, męczeńska śmierć, święte zwłoki
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.45361#0220
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Late Medieval and Early Modern Art
Old Believers, it is also significant that John the Baptist is a saint, a prophet “on the border
between times,” and at the same time an ascetic and a “divine madman” who abandons eve-
rything that is earthly and sensual.92 For this reason, the image of John the Baptist as an angel
appears in the context of the animals and plants of the Garden of Eden, as can be seen in the
nineteenth-century icon from Palekh in Pavel Korin’s collection.93 “Divine grace” plays a key
role in all events involving John and with his earthly remains; the best example of it is the
heavenly intervention that led to the finding of his head in the fourth century. According to
Salminius Hermias Sozomen, it happened “by an impulse from God or from the prophet.”94
The presence of relics makes the place in which they are kept holy. The body, earthly remains
are in a sense outside time, and their existence is a particular sign from Heaven. Even though
they are accessible to humans, they belong to the sphere of the dead, and at the same time are a
vision of the body in the future, the untouched body preserved in this form awaiting Parousia.
The icons associated with John the Baptist in the collection of the National Museum in
Warsaw are representative of the artistic tendencies of the seventeenth-nineteenth centuries,
showing the thinking in that era about this saint, and about saints in general. The pictures of
the dead saint, as well as the images of his relics, belong in a particular iconographie category.
It appeared in the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries on the margins of hagiographie interpretations,
and then the saint’s corporality became a central theme of increasingly elaborate narratives.
By the seventeenth-nineteenth centuries they had developed their own discrete meaning in
art. Despite that era’s changes in Russian religiosity, the cult of John the Baptist remained very
traditional, operating with old religious categories. New elements in it were largely eschatologi-
cal and stemmed from waiting for the approaching end of the world and from the belief in the
role that saints’ relics, and their intercession, would play in the time of Parousia. John’s relics,
especially his head, much like he himself had preceded Jesus before his public appearance in
Palestine, were to serve as the “voice calling out” to announce the Messiah at the end of time.
92 Kazmierski, op. cit., p. 9.
93 Antonova, op. cit., pp. 137-8, cat. no. 116, fig. 136.
94 The Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen, op. cit., p. 346.
Late Medieval and Early Modern Art
Old Believers, it is also significant that John the Baptist is a saint, a prophet “on the border
between times,” and at the same time an ascetic and a “divine madman” who abandons eve-
rything that is earthly and sensual.92 For this reason, the image of John the Baptist as an angel
appears in the context of the animals and plants of the Garden of Eden, as can be seen in the
nineteenth-century icon from Palekh in Pavel Korin’s collection.93 “Divine grace” plays a key
role in all events involving John and with his earthly remains; the best example of it is the
heavenly intervention that led to the finding of his head in the fourth century. According to
Salminius Hermias Sozomen, it happened “by an impulse from God or from the prophet.”94
The presence of relics makes the place in which they are kept holy. The body, earthly remains
are in a sense outside time, and their existence is a particular sign from Heaven. Even though
they are accessible to humans, they belong to the sphere of the dead, and at the same time are a
vision of the body in the future, the untouched body preserved in this form awaiting Parousia.
The icons associated with John the Baptist in the collection of the National Museum in
Warsaw are representative of the artistic tendencies of the seventeenth-nineteenth centuries,
showing the thinking in that era about this saint, and about saints in general. The pictures of
the dead saint, as well as the images of his relics, belong in a particular iconographie category.
It appeared in the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries on the margins of hagiographie interpretations,
and then the saint’s corporality became a central theme of increasingly elaborate narratives.
By the seventeenth-nineteenth centuries they had developed their own discrete meaning in
art. Despite that era’s changes in Russian religiosity, the cult of John the Baptist remained very
traditional, operating with old religious categories. New elements in it were largely eschatologi-
cal and stemmed from waiting for the approaching end of the world and from the belief in the
role that saints’ relics, and their intercession, would play in the time of Parousia. John’s relics,
especially his head, much like he himself had preceded Jesus before his public appearance in
Palestine, were to serve as the “voice calling out” to announce the Messiah at the end of time.
92 Kazmierski, op. cit., p. 9.
93 Antonova, op. cit., pp. 137-8, cat. no. 116, fig. 136.
94 The Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen, op. cit., p. 346.