Reflecting the Hierarchy of Being in Visual Art

Or... Why How We Paint Christ Ought to Dictate How We Paint Everything

In this exploration of Christian art, I summarise the hierarchy of being according to Catholic theology, rooted in Thomistic philosophy of nature, which orders creation from inanimate matter, through plant life, animal life, and humanity, all directing us to Christ, the Creator, who is both perfect man and God. Authentic Christian art [1], shaped by a Catholic worldview and centuries of sacred tradition, reflects this hierarchy by balancing naturalism and idealism, uniting the material and spiritual dimensions of existence. As I explain, traditionally, this balance is first perfected in depictions of Christ, whose dual nature as divine and human sets the standard for all artistic representation. From liturgical icons to secular landscapes, Christian art organically reveals the Creator’s presence, bearing the mark of Christ in every aspect of creation. 

In writing this, as is always necessary in the blog format, I have made assertions that some might feel need justification. I have added numbered footnotes (in square brackets) with further reading for those who wish to delve further in this regard.

The Mocking of Christ, 1628-30, by the Flemish Baroque artist Sir Anthony Van Dyck

Naturalism and Idealism in Christian Art

Traditionally, Christian art has balanced naturalism – conformity to visual appearances – with idealism, a partial abstraction that deviates from strict adherence to visual appearances to suggest the existence of invisible truths associated with whatever is painted [2]. 

With the emergence of the dominant modern art movements of the 20th century, through to the present day, artists have typically rejected this approach, instead leaning toward one extreme or the other. Abstract Expressionism [3], for example, dissolves form into unrecognisable chaos, seeking to portray the soul detached from the body. At the other extreme, Photorealism, with its mechanical precision, reduces reality to mere matter, neglecting the spiritual dimension and presenting a world devoid of meaning. Both approaches conflict with the Catholic understanding of creation as a harmonious union of material and spiritual elements. 

Authentic Christian art integrates naturalism – ensuring subjects are recognisable – with idealism, stylising forms to convey invisible truths, such as the presence of a principle of animation in animal and plant life.

This balance is most fully realised in depictions of Christ [4], who, as the Creed states, is the one through whom “all things were made.” As both divine and human, Christ embodies the ultimate union of the created and the uncreated world. In the Eucharist, where He is present – body, soul, and divinity – liturgical art, designed to deepen our encounter with Him, becomes the highest form of Christian artistic expression. The style used to portray Christ, especially in liturgical contexts, sets the standard for all art, reflecting His dual nature and His role as the source of creation.

Crucifixion by Velázquez, 17th-century Spanish, in the Baroque style.

The Hierarchy of Being – How all created beings bear the mark of Christ, and the importance of this to artists.

Catholic theology recognises a hierarchy of being within creation, with Christ, its Creator, at the apex.

Christ possesses an immaterial divine nature and a human nature comprising both a material body and an immaterial, immortal soul. This Christology reveals Him as the node through which all created beings pass, uniting the material and spiritual in His person. We all unite the material body and the created spiritual soul in our human person. Christ unites this human nature to his uncreated (and therefore Divine) purely spiritual nature. He straddles, so to speak, the divide between heaven and earth. The divide he straddles is between divine and human nature, that is, uncreated and created existence. All of creation bears his mark, his thumbprint is on them as the clay pot bears the mark of the hands of the potter, but the fullness of being – created and uncreated is in Christ alone. All other created beings bear aspects of Christ without possessing existence in its fullness as Christ does. Christ is one with us in His humanity and one with God in His divinity.

Humanity is unique among material beings, possessing both a body and an immortal spiritual soul. The spirit of man, which St. Paul refers to in his letters to the Ephesians and the Hebrews, is the highest aspect of his soul, comprising the intellect and will (according to St Thomas writing in his commentaries on the Epistles), distinguishing humans from animals and all other material beings, and likening us to angels. [5] Angels are created beings, too, but are pure spirit. The reference to the spirit of man names the spiritual faculties of the soul, by which he can be taken up to supernatural destiny. It gives us the capacity for self-awareness – being “aware that we are aware” – and enables spiritual acts such as knowing and loving God, through the full exercise of the intellect and the will. The human soul, immaterial and immortal, survives bodily death and allows humans to engage in rational and volitional acts that animals, with their sensitive souls, which we will refer to in a moment, cannot perform.

The paragraph above describes man’s natural state, but through this capacity of the human spirit to relate and respond to God, Christians have the potential to be raised to a higher state by grace. Through grace, we are deified, partaking of the divine nature. This process is fully realised when we are united to God in heaven, experiencing the beatific vision, and, by degrees, increasing degrees in this life, to the extent that we remain on that path to heaven.

Below man in the hierarchy of being, animals possess what is referred to as a sensitive soul, enabling sensation and movement, but not the capacity to know and love God, which are the higher operations of the intellect and will present in the spirit of man.

Plant life, which sits below animals, has a vegetative soul, governing growth, nutrition, and reproduction, but lacking sensation and movement in the manner of animals.

Inanimate matter, though lacking a soul, which is the principle that gives life to those beings above it, nevertheless reflects the divine order through its conformity to the natural order in its internal structure, which we perceive when we apprehend its beauty. All created beings have an essence (from God) that gives them their defining characteristics. For living beings, that essence is called the soul. All inanimate beings have an essence (which, without ‘life’, is not called soul). Every created essence (with existence) reflects its Creator.

All creation, therefore, to varying degrees, bears the mark of Christ, its Creator. Each being possesses the faculties of all those below them in the hierarchy, with some additional higher faculties that distinguish the higher from the lower beings. Therefore, the human soul includes the powers of the vegetative and sensitive soul. These are assumed by the ‘higher’ soul and are raised to a human level. The one spiritual soul of man is the ‘form’ of the whole body. We are not an amalgam of different souls.

The beauty of the natural created order is in both his material body and his spiritual soul because they are both part of the created order. We perceive both when we interact with each other, and it is the duty of the artist who is devoted to representing what is true to indicate this somehow in the way he paints man.

Crucifixion by Federico Barocci, Italian, late 16th century, in the Baroque style.

This hierarchy of being informs a parallel hierarchy in Christian art. The style developed for depicting the person of Christ as a man – balancing naturalism and idealism – serves as the model for portraying saints, religious subjects, and secular forms, such as portraits, landscapes, and still lifes. Whether painting a saint or a flower, the Christian artist looks to Christ for inspiration and applies principles derived from liturgical art to each piece, ensuring that every work reflects Christ in a way that is appropriate to its subject and is rooted in and points to the Creator. Each subject, therefore, reflects this balance of naturalism and idealism as defined by the representation of the Creator.

The Eucharist as the Wellspring of Christian Culture

The Eucharist, where Christ is truly present, is the source and summit of the Catholic faith and fittingly the primary inspiration for Christian art. Liturgical art, therefore, particularly in Eucharistic contexts, shapes our approach to the mystery of God.

The purpose of liturgical art is to make visible in an image the realities that are otherwise invisible to us, to help us encounter Christ more profoundly in the Mass. Christ is present in the Eucharist, but under the appearance of bread and wine. Sacred art can sit alongside the Blessed Sacrament and show us Christ and, one might even say, supply in some reduced way the missing accidents – ie the outward appearance – of the person of Christ. This helps us grasp the mystery that Christ is present, body, soul, and divinity, in the Eucharist.

Similarly, liturgical art portrays the saints and angels in heaven who participate in the Mass, praying and worshipping alongside us, but are invisible to us. It also portrays the essential narratives of the feasts celebrated in the liturgical cycle and reflected in the rituals of the liturgy, in a way that makes the theological truths associated with the memorial more apparent.

Just as there is a hierarchy of being in the cosmos, so for men there is a hierarchy of activity, which has the worship of God at its pinnacle. Hence, by a similar argument, the form and content of art intended to help us encounter Christ in the Mass become the type for all art. That is, once again, the style used to paint Christ in these settings thus becomes the archetype for all artistic expression, manifesting His body, soul, and divinity.

The style with which we paint Christ for use in the liturgy becomes, therefore, the wellspring of Catholic art, with the stylistic elements cascading down into art for every other subject and every other purpose, as all, in the proper order of things, is derived from and points to Christ present in the Eucharist.

An authentic Christian tradition of art reflects this hierarchy of being and of human activity. An icon of Christ Pantocrator, with its stylised features and golden background, conveys His divine authority, while a Baroque painting of the Crucifixion, with dramatic chiaroscuro, emphasises His human suffering. Although each is very different in style, both unite naturalism and idealism to reveal Christ’s dual nature, guiding the faithful in worship [6]. This Eucharistic foundation extends to secular art. A landscape, with its harmonious compositions, or a still life of flowers, with its attention to natural beauty and symbolic meaning, reflects the same divine order seen in Christ.

The Baroque Style of Painting is Permeated with the Mark of Christ

To illustrate what I have described, let’s consider the Christian tradition of Baroque art. To be distinguished from other naturalistic styles that many this is the art of Frederico Barocci, Caravaggio, Vermeer, De La Tours, Velazquez, Rubens, Ribera, Reni and Tiepolo and Rembrandt and should be distinguished from other naturalistic styles such as Photorealism and 19th-century Realism (such as the work of Bougeureau, whom I consider the godfather of sentimental Catholic kitsch that became the standard for mid-20th century prayer cards).

This style of art was given impetus by some simple directives from the Council of Trent, which closed in 1565, and the Catholic Counter-Reformation that followed, aimed at serving the worship of the faithful in the liturgy. It took several decades for these directives to take hold and for a response to emerge concretely. The tradition evolved from the styles of the masters of the High Renaissance and other notable 16th-century painters, particularly Titian. The result of this integration was a distinctive new style developed first to serve Christian worship. What began as liturgical art, however, quickly became the standard for portraiture, landscape, and still life.

Protestant artists took to this new Catholic art form, too. The Dutch artists to the north of Italy, especially, saw this liturgical art style and, attracted by its power and beauty, quickly adapted it to their purposes, focusing especially on devotional religious art, portraiture and landscape, inadvertently bringing a Catholic form into their Protestant Christian culture.

Caravaggio is credited with popularising the style, beginning around 1600, but perhaps a better articulation of what became the baroque style was done slightly earlier by another Italian, Federico Barocci. (His first name is Federico, not Frederico!) Consider this painting, which depicts St. Jerome and was created in 1598.

Crucifixion by Federico Barocci, Italian, late 16th century, in the Baroque style.

I have never read any historical account that confirms this, but I have often wondered if the mysterious name for the style, baroque, is in part a play on Federico’s surname. Indeed, his work of this period bears all the hallmarks of the tradition and was pioneering. Notice certain features that are the hallmarks of baroque art, and consider that this is not a photographic type representation of nature at all:

The figure of St Jerome is painted with the most naturalistic coloration and is most brightly lit, most detailed in its rendering and most sharply focused. All of these devices are designed to draw the eye to the most important part of the composition.

He draws attention to the figure, further, by contrast with the background for which he uses a limited palette, in this case, one colour, sepia and which he varies tonally only. There is very little detail in the rendition of the background compared to, say, the face of St Jerome. Notice how the brightest colours are in the cloth next to St Jerome. And the sharpest contrast in tone is between the line that is on the edge of his right elbow and traces its way along his shoulder to a sharp point under the right ear. This leads our eye to the face. See also how this contrast is sharpened by making the background very dark immediately adjacent to this edge.

The focus, that is, the sharpness and clarity of expression, varies in different parts of the painting, too. The least focused parts are those on the periphery, and the most focused are those in the primary point of interest, the face and the hands of the saint. These are the primary points of interest within the saint because the face and gesture communicate most powerfully the mood of the person. This is how the artist communicates to the viewer of the painting that this is not a sterile wax model, but a living being with a soul. Ordinarily, we would discern this by observing a person in real time.

We see the same stylistic vocabulary in Rembrandt’s famous self-portrait:

…in a landscape by the Dutch 17th-century artist Albert Cuyp;

And in a still life by the French 18th-century artist Chardin:

To summarise, Christian artistic tradition, as exemplified by the Baroque, in art conforms to the principle that the way we paint Christ is the way we paint all of creation. By balancing naturalism and idealism, Christian art, especially in its liturgical forms, reveals the unity of material and spiritual. From those forms intended to help deepen the encounter with Christ in the Eucharist, the source and summit of the faith, flows a cascade of artistic expression that shapes sacred and secular art alike. Whether depicting a saint, a landscape, or a still life, the artist draws from the same principles used to portray Christ, ensuring that every work bears the mark of the Creator and invites the viewer to contemplate the beauty and truth of the Catholic faith.

Footnotes:

1. Art is not Christian simply because a Christian painted it, or because some Christians like it. There are criteria by which we can say that the content and form are consistent with the Catholic worldview. Regarding how we make a judgment on how both style and content of art conform to a Catholic worldview, read my book, The Way of Beauty, and for an introduction a past Substack: ‘Eastward Ho! How The Catholic Church Can Reestablish Its Liturgical Art Traditions to Replicate and Even Surpass the Glory of the Past.’

2. For details on how Christian art balances naturalism and idealism, read my previous Substack article, Both the Chaos of Jackson Pollock and the Sterility of Photorealism are Incompatible with Christianity.

3. For definitions of Abstract Expressionism and Photorealism, the 20th century art movements, I refer readers to the Tate Modern website, which as a museum that advocates for the value of such styles (unlike me), I will take as representing accurately what artists in those styles were aiming for.

4. For the conventions on how paintings of Christ reveal his human and divine nature, read a recent Substack article: ‘Visual Odes to Joy: How Sacred Art Reveals the Body, Soul and Divinity of Christ.’

5. St Thomas uses the word ‘spiritus’ to describe the human spirit. There is a tradition in Orthodox theology of using the Greek word, nous, to refer to the human spirit. Originating in ancient Greek thought, nous generally means “mind,” but in this context, it is usually used in the sense of “intellect,” or “reason”. For Aquinas, the will and intellect, which comprise the spirit, are not two separate “things”. The will is simply the appetite that flows from, and corresponds to, intellectual apprehension. This is why St. Thomas calls the will the “rational appetite,” which is the appetitive movement towards goodness apprehended by the intellect. The use of the word “nous” in the East to refer to this rational part in man is fitting, therefore, and, it seems to me, consistent with St Thomas’ approach.

6. For details on why the three liturgical traditions of the Catholic Church are considered the Iconographic, the Gothic and the Baroque styles, and how each balances naturalism and idealism, read my book The Way of Beauty.