Dear Christopher,

I am afraid the painting of Matthias Grünewald (c. 1470 – August 31, 1528) shows clearly the pain and suffering of Jesus.

Dear Christopher,

I think that Christ and the saints were represented partly according to the demands of donators. Also, the conceptional approach of the age  - which differed hugely from that of these days - played an important role.  

Dear Christopher,

I think that believers in that time focused on the souls’ destiny and salvation not on physical suffering. Physical pain and suffering was so common in everyday life (brute force, wars, public executions, tortures, etc.) that painters perhaps did not wanted to show them.

Dear Christopher,

I think that believers in that time focused on the souls’ destiny and salvation not on physical suffering. Physical pain and suffering was so common in everyday life (brute force, wars, public executions, tortures, etc.) that painters perhaps did not wanted to show them.

Dear András

You have given me much food for thought.

I agree that MG's Isenheim crucifiction scene is more expressive than most, but it reflects more physical exhaustion combined with resigned anticipation of death (the facial expression reminds me a little of that of the ancient Greek statue of "the dying Celt") rather than physical pain.

Dear Ivo,

Could you show some of these pictures?

Dear Ivo,

Thanks for the pictures. Christopher indicated that pain and suffering cannot be seen on the martyrs and victims.  This is right also for your pictures. Serenity and balance are the very characters of these martyrs.

Dear All,

Here you are a drawing of Dürer representing the dead Jesus:

Dear András and Ivo

Thank you very much for your contributions, particularly the pictures. And yes András, you are right. The depictions are more of how (situation, process) they suffered rather than their physical pain. 

And you are right also concerning the role of the church, either via formal instruction (e.g. council of Trent) or indirect indoctrination of artists via their patronage. The vast majority of paintings of the early modern period were religious in content/patronage. Did the requirements for visual (non)depiction of pain become absorbed into the artistic canon? Even relatively recent art has provided little visual agony. Frida Kahlo's "Tormented body", for example shows her with little facial expression while the bodily pain is expressed by nails in he skin, a broken (spinal) column, being held together with straps and braces.

I have a theory as to what was happening in the religious martyrdoms etc. but I have to leave my computer just now.

Cheers

Chris

Dear Christopher,

I feel that painters preferred to use visual symbols instead to show the physical pain. This has been common in earlier and modern times.  Frida Kahlo's pictures are excellent examples for this argument.

Dear Christopher,

No feelings on the faces.

Wow, 6 months! I completely forgot about this.

From what we know about central (brain) processing of visual (and other?) sensory input and via MRI flow studies looking at "mirror neurons" and their putative role in empathy, there are pathways from both sensory and motor cortex to the amygadala, which are associated with emotional responses. If the stimulus is a strong unpleasant one, a further pathway is activated to the insula, which can cause strong feelings of revulsion.

Although the Church did not (of course) know neuroanatomy, there was an awareness of the emotive effects of strong realistic images of bloodshed, agony and the like. This must have been particularly relevant to their relatively image-naïve church-going population. The church was interested in the use of these images as a medium for narrative instruction in (mostly) the illiterate. They wanted  those images to be able to describe the circumstances of how Jesus and the saints suffered for the faith, not to depict the agony of the suffering, which would be counterproductive.

These days we are all exposed to visual depictions of all kinds of violence carnage and mayhem. But even now it is rare for visual arts to depict the horrors and pain of violence, which tend to be represented as visual metaphors (e.g. Kahlo's use of a broken column for her spine or thorns to represent her pain). The gradual repeated narrative rather than emotive usage of imagery of suffering seems to have become embedded in the canon of the visual arts (I am of course excluding cinema).

Has anyone ever seen the picture of a mangled wreck of a car used to sell the new vehicle?!

Wow, 6 months! I completely forgot about this.

From what we know about central (brain) processing of visual (and other?) sensory input and via MRI flow studies looking at "mirror neurons" and their putative role in empathy, there are pathways from both sensory and motor cortex to the amygadala, which are associated with emotional responses. If the stimulus is a strong unpleasant one, a further pathway is activated to the insula, which can cause strong feelings of revulsion.

Although the Church did not (of course) know neuroanatomy, there was an awareness of the emotive effects of strong realistic images of bloodshed, agony and the like. This must have been particularly relevant to their relatively image-naïve church-going population. The church was interested in the use of these images as a medium for narrative instruction in (mostly) the illiterate. They wanted  those images to be able to describe the circumstances of how Jesus and the saints suffered for the faith, not to depict the agony of the suffering, which would be counterproductive.

These days we are all exposed to visual depictions of all kinds of violence carnage and mayhem. But even now it is rare for visual arts to depict the horrors and pain of violence, which tend to be represented as visual metaphors (e.g. Kahlo's use of a broken column for her spine or thorns to represent her pain). The gradual repeated narrative rather than emotive usage of imagery of suffering seems to have become embedded in the canon of the visual arts (I am of course excluding cinema).

Has anyone ever seen the picture of a mangled wreck of a car used to sell the new vehicle?!

Because they forgot expressiveness was already invented by early Christian artists.

Gothic and Renaissance painters thought is was a cool thing to do to represent martyrs entering the symbolic order as Lacan would say. 

(They are not expressing pain but are represented on the moment they are becoming symbols of holiness)

When we wonder why there is no expression of pain - we are projecting our XX th century realism and expressionism on to the Gothic and Renaissance periods.

Dear Willy

Thank you for your contribution.

In response:

1. I do not understand what you are trying to say here. What do you mean by expressiveness, and who were the early Christian artists that invented it? Have you any examples of their works?

2. What do you mean by "a cool thing to do"? As far as I am aware, Gothic artists and the majority of Renaissance artists (probably all in the Early Renaissance), painted what they were told to paint and for the most part how it should be painted. So my question then would become why were they told to paint these scenes in the way that they did? This was well before the time when the artist was at liberty to express himself "artistically" (cool or otherwise).

3. I concur, what was important to the Church was the representation of the holiness of their martyrdom, not the mechanical processes (and pain) involved. However it is interesting that emotional distress and psychological pain were expressed in art of the time (Giotto's lamentation, and Masaccio's expulsion from Eden come to mind) and the "pain" of psychological scars usually lasts longer than physical injury. Human expression of psychological distress has similarities to the expression of physical pain, so the artists would have been quite capable of depicting pain.

4. I think you are reading too much into my question. In asking it I am not suggesting that they should have visually depicted pain, and were somehow wrong-minded in not doing so, I am simply enquiring as to the reasons why they did not. Far from projecting my 21st Century psychology back 600 years, I would like to be able to interpret the reasons behind the expressionless depictions with a "period eye" for the times in which they were painted.

Estimado Christipher voy a intentar contestarte en varios mensajes, pues son muchas las preguntas que haces y muy complejas. No obstante te contesto desde España donde se desarrolla con gran fuerza ese arte por el que preguntas. Sin entrar en Gótico y Renacimiento que lo haré la siguiente respuesta, en esta primera me centro en la iconografía de los santos mártires en general. Una cuestión es la iconografía votiva en donde el santo es representado sin sufrimiento (triunfante, como si estuviera en el cielo) para la veneración; por ejemplo Santa Lucía con la palma de mártir y una copa en donde tiene los ojos que le arrancaron, Santa Águeda con la palma y en la copa los pechos que le cortaron, Santa Apolonia con la palma y las tenazas con las que le sacaron los dientes, Santa Eulalia con el horno en donde la quemaron, Santa Bárbara con la torre del castillo en donde la encerraron,... Otra cuestión son las representaciones hagiográficas de cada santo, es decir, los capítulos de su vida, aquí sí hay sufrimiento, pues se representan las escenas de una manera muy fuerte. Normalmente ya en el gótico se pintaban tablas en donde en la escena principal estaba el santo con su iconografía votiva y alrededor las demás escenas de su vida en las que se presenta el martirio, muchas veces los martirios no hacían efecto, pues un santo mártir sólo podía morir de dos maneras o le cortaban la cabeza como a San Pablo (muerte de honor) o recibían una tortura de Cristo (crucificado, azotado,...).

Respecto al gótico, por supuesto que existen obras con sufrimiento y quizás de las que "más miedo dan," caso por ejemplo de los crucificados y cristis yacentes realizados en piel. El más famoso, el Cristo de Burgos o de San Agustín venerado en la catedral de Burgos con pelo y uñas naturales y una cavidad en el costado para que el viernes santo fluyera sangre. Otro el yacente del convento de las clarisas de Palencia, obra que se llegó a pensar que era un muerto real, pues hasta los dientes son naturales. En el Renacimiento sí es cierto que hay menos sufrimiento, aunque lo hay el Cristo de la Hermandad del Museo de Sevilla es un ejemplo de la línea sempertinata de Miguel Ángel quien en su infierno del Juicio Final de la Capilla Sixtina puedes ver perfectamente el sufrimiento y desesperación de los condenados. Te pongo un ejemplo muy claro e histórico, cuando Felipe II de España encarga al Greco el "Martirio de San Mauricio," éste pintó al santo conversando con los generales de la legión Tebana y el martirio aparece en segundo plano. El lienzo que iba a ser para el retablo mayor del real monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial al rey no le gustó porque no representaba el martirio y sufrimiento del santo y buscó otro pintor que lo representara en el momento de la decapitación. Como este caso hay muchas obras en el Renacimiento, por ejemplo Vigarni representa a San Juan Bautista siendo decapitado en la capilla real de Granada (tumba de los Reyes Católicos).