Easter is synonymous with passions, though not always the ones we're familiar with. In the past, images of the Passion-the suffering of Christ came to mind. These days the image of Easter we conjure up might be quite different.
In today's secular Australia the icons associated with Easter include anything from grinning buck-toothed bunnies, bilbies, and fluffy chickens to more and more, deliciously tempting images of pure reprehensible pleasure-chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate. Chocolate in the shape of eggs, hens, and carrots. Chocolate chips in hot cross buns. Easter in our public images has become the feast of instant, and infinitely repeated physical gratification.
The ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions is investigating how societies, think, feel and function by examining the history of European development between 1100-1800 and comparing it with present day Australia.
So surely one would expect the Centre's research to show that medieval Christians thought of Easter as a time of joy and celebration of Christ's rising from the dead?
"The odd thing is, it's rare to find a medieval image showing unrestrained joy among the onlookers at Christ's resurrection. Even vibrant pieces like Grunewald's Isenheim Altarpiece resurrection, or moving ones like Fra Angelico's 'Noli Me Tangere' don't portray the participants overcome with gladness," Professor Philippa Maddern, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions says.
"In Grunewald's piece, Christ launches himself from the broken tomb in a blaze of glory like rocket; his face, if anything, expresses calm mastery over death, the poses of the watching soldiers complete mental and physical astonishment and turmoil," Maddern remarks.
' In Fra Angelico's masterpiece, Mary Magdalen, meeting the risen Christ in the garden, kneels and reaches out to Him; but His hand gesture warns her to keep her distance. On His face is perhaps an expression of grave, kindly warning; on hers a restrained, though intense, awe and love.
"From at least 1250 onwards the women meeting the angel at the empty tomb display surprise, wonder, even perhaps amazement-but they're not breaking out into a celebration, of chocolate or anything else," she said.
Much more commonly associated with Easter (or, to be precise, Good Friday) in the medieval tradition are representations of the dying or dead Christ on the Cross, of His friends and mourners taking His dead body down from the Cross and laying it in the tomb, and of Mary weeping over the dead body. And here we find intense emotion-not joy, happiness or pleasure of any kind, but terrible, heart-wrenching grief on a universal scale.
"It's there from very early on; just three months ago, in the Berlin Bode Museum I stood in front of a small ivory tablet from the Rhineland, made before the year 1100; Christ hangs on the cross, eyes closed in death, Mary and John stand on each side, calm-faced but with hands upraised in stock gestures of grief and worship, two angels at the top hide their weeping eyes with their robes. And the images become more intensely emotional as time goes on. The mourners in 13th and 14th C crucifixion painting look sad, but it's hard to find one actually represented as shedding tears," Maddern said.
She says that new research shows it is only from the first half of the fifteenth century onward, that painters-especially in the Netherlands and surrounding areas-commonly began to portray both angels and mourners weeping actual tears.
"At first it's relatively restrained. In the Seilern triptych of 1415, possibly by Robert Campin, an attendant angel lifts his hand to wipe away a tear or two,"
As the century went on, more and more tears appear on the faces of human, as well as angelic, mourners. The National Gallery of Victoria's Hans Memling painting of the crucified Christ in the arms of the Virgin (1474-1479 shows Mary calm-faced, but with tears covering her cheeks, mirroring the trickles of blood that run down Christ's forehead from his crown of thorns.
"The late-fifteenth-century Flemish painter Dieric Bouts and his workshop apparently became famous (and successful!) for their increasing tear-drenched images; their 'Sorrowing Virgin' (1480-1500) has tears welling uncontrollably out of eyes red with weeping. By the 17th century, the Spanish sculptress Luisa Roldan had converted the image to sculpture, planting crystal tears on the faces of her mourning Marys," Maddern said.
It seems that images of Easter remain powerful to this day-even if the outcome is nothing more than a shopping frenzy. Though they were no less powerful in the middle ages, what they perhaps produced was very different. There was no yearning for the melting delight of chocolate in the mouth, but an intensification of emotions and concentration on the seriousness of Easter to medieval Christians-real death, terrible grief, leading ultimately not to unrestrained joyful celebrations but to amazement and awe that new life could, apparently, come from such grief.
Media Contacts
Philippa Maddern: Tel: +61 8 6488 2178 or email philippa.maddern@uwa.edu.au
Erika von Kaschke, National Communications Officer: +61 8 6488 4731 or Erika.vonkaschke@uwa.edu.au