Anya Roz learned some of her first Bible stories in the Soviet museums of her childhood in spite of harsh state disapproval. In the museums, Scripture remained sacrosanct and undefiled, even in the face of a militantly atheist nation determined to wipe out the Word and its followers.
Ancient paintings spoke to Anya in their own languages in their halls. As a Jewish woman, she found the stories of Yael and Moses strange, exhilarating and oddly compelling.
Why were these particular characters and themes repeated continuously over the centuries by one great master after another, she wondered? Empires rose and fell and styles changed, but the temple scenes, the prodigal sons and parted seas remained.
Anya wondered at their obvious importance to Rembrandt, Velasquez, El Greco, Michelangelo and so many others. A good majority of Russian and European art from earlier eras dwelt on the Bible, and that seemed to demand an explanation from viewers; especially with Soviets demoting them to the wasteland of mythology and superstition.
But alongside Egyptian or Greek art and mythology Anya found Bible art strangely relevant. They hinted at a deeper meaning and “continuous mapping of the modern psyche,” she recalls. Art from the Bible was still connected to a living tradition, clearly setting it apart from mythology.
Museums in all cultures are in a sense defenders of their ancient faiths. They are repositories of history and culture that can’t be so easily obliterated as written matter. Museums host the beautiful fruits of nations and the flowering of their best thoughts and impulses in the form of painting, sculpture, antiquities and treasure.
Because of the universal pride people hold in their cultures, few are willing to discard proofs of their past existence and national exploits. In a sense it’s like defacing the tomb of your parents. Regardless of prevailing rulers and powers, traditional art generally lasts when all else is gutted or purged.
In a post-Christian West this is a good thing. Classical religious art could be one of our last bastions from the politically correct onslaught against all things biblical. Rabidly anti-Christian cultural elites may despise everything we believe, but they can hardly discard the art that informed their entire lives and created their parent culture.
Russia’s Hermitage is one of the best examples of art’s value to a people. From its founding and patronage by Catherine the Great since 1764, the grand art palaces survived war and catastrophe. Stormed during the Revolution, the collections survived flurries of sacking by Bolsheviks. Bureaucrats and Protekult types denounced the bourgeois nature of religious art, but their demagoguery didn’t advance much past the doors of the Hermitage.
Symbolic destruction of a despised regime is a type of hazing for Marxists, whose esteem of men and art is generally low (unless useful to the state). The art-loving French were an exception, with the Louvre being opened to the public for the first time in the midst of war. But according to an official Hermitage site, worthy men on both sides of the Russian Revolution “found arguments to justify preserving the national legacy.”
Stalin imposed Socialist Realism on the masses and imprisoned and murdered many non-conforming artists and writers. Still the religious treasures of the Hermitage stood the purge. El Greco’s St. Peter and St. Paul stand before an illustrated Scripture commanding us to read, while Stalin arrested pastors and nuns for the same.
Titians’ golden St. Sebastion stood a symbolic martyr for the millions who perished in camps for their faith. The Hermitage catalogue notes Sebastian is “depicted as utterly alone in a sinister and hostile environment and yet with his spirit unbroken.” Perhaps they couldn’t have said it quite so truthfully in Stalin’s day.
Giorgione’s “Judith,” with her foot saucily atop Holofernes’ head as if in a dance, still has the power to shock. It is legend that essentially follows the account in Judges of Yael and her similar meet-up with Sisera. These images of dainty, feminine women overcoming the power of the enemy, the state and heads of armies through cleverness and God’s help will always be subversive to dark powers and rulers.
Did viewing these paintings during the dark years of the purge comfort Christians and Jews in any way? Was the miraculous survival of biblical art one more proof of the power of their God to redeem and rescue them?
Author Debra Dean, who wrote the 2007 novel “The Madonnas of Leningrad,” follows the life of a museum docent who withstood the 900-day German siege of 1941. Her story weaves strands of longing about great art, great love and importance of family and national memory. Dean recreates the stripped, wartime Hermitage as a personal and community refuge even with the art temporarily removed to safer harbors. Marina memorizes her favorite Hermitage works while they are away as a means of keeping her sanity and hope.
Ironically, classical religious art in the West still commands loyalty and respect that Marxists, atheists and assorted leftists can’t easily deny – even when their subjects flatly contradict all they believe. Unbelievers with an appreciation of art can’t help but admit the inner value and power our greatest Western art reaches, even if they have no explanation for it but the prevailing atmosphere of genius in the Renaissance.
Random attacks on the Western musical front also occur from time to time, such as a Chinese campaign in the 1970s against the evils of Beethoven. It may be hard to imagine now, but Maoism was so petty, extreme and irrational, that virtually anything could happen and did. The fevered and ultra-paranoid mind of some party hack found the opening chords of the Fifth “interpreted as fate knocking on the door, and the bourgeois concept of fate was obsolete” (thus spake the Party).
Bans against Western music and art are getting to be a common occurrence in Islamic culture, where they recognize more easily than we do that religious tradition in art is powerful. They jealously guard their religious and art heritage. Official museums in Saudi Arabia are virtually all dedicated to Islamic or pre-Islamic art and culture or related history.
Five out of eight wings in the National Museum of Saudi Arabia are openly Islamic. But in this Kingdom you won’t find openly displayed Christian art, not even a Michelangelo or Raphael. Tainted.
It’s not that educated Saudis aren’t aware of the unsurpassed excellence of Western masterpieces. Ironically a Saudi children’s art school promotes their students as the “Young Rembrandts” not the Young “Yaqut al-Musta’simi’s” (a famed 13th century calligrapher).
Back at the American ranch, we house a myriad of Western religious art works in hundreds of excellent museums. One of the finest is The National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Each of us technically share ownership in its paintings and sculpture as American properties.
Perhaps we shouldn’t take these gems for granted, but look them up once in awhile and find their current residence. With the slings and arrows we’ve recently endured as a nation, our souls need a little comfort and joy.
Classical art, literature and poetry, along with their first inspiration, the Bible, remind us of our shared heritage and beliefs. Perhaps they will also help keep the Bible alive through our current season of moral and political blight.
Thanks to HermitageMuseum.org, JewishArtNow.com, DanielPipes.org.
