Page 9 - For the purpose of this essay when I refer to ‘spirit’ ‘devine’ or ‘spirituality’ I am referring

p157) ‘In the history of art the sun or bright (yellow-golden) light signifies salvation,
hope, life and, more specifically, the divinity of and redemption in Christ, often through
the halo’. Julian Bell also refers to this powerful symbolic
and significant meaning in painting in his book, ‘What is

Painting? Representation and Modern Art’ (1999, p210)
when he makes reference to Bellini’s work, ‘The Virgin in
Bellini’s picture, (Fig–4), you might say, is represented in
synecdoche: a part of her, a certain aspect of her physical
being, is shown. The Holy Spirit, however, is represented in
metaphor, as a dove: it is this kind of representation that is
usually thought of as symbolic’. Whether it’s the use of the
halo, light or symbolic representations of the Holy Spirit as
a dove, this imagery is an instant recognition of Christian
painting. So both the symbolic representation and the less
obvious deeper creative process, which can be regarded as
spiritual or divine influence, go hand in hand in creating Fig – 4. Jacopo Bellini. The
great paintings, which engage the viewer in such a Annunciation, early 1430s.
spiritual experience. But I believe that the subject matter whatever its content whether it
is perceived as religious or secular is secondary to allowing the creative process or
being open to the influence of the divine
. This primary purpose can be seen principally in the work of the romantic
th
th
painters of the 18 and 19 centuries. In Rosenblum’s book ‘Modern Painting and the
Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko’ he seeks to show that the tradition
of romantic painting encompassed a wider net of painters than we are led to
traditionally believe, and that these artists sought to realise the divine and
transcendental while continuing to attempt to solve the practical and tactile problems
within their work similar to their
contemporaries. In reference to Friedrich,
Rosenblum goes on to say, ‘Friedrich’s
dilemma, his need to revitalise the experience
of divinity in a secular world that lay outside
the sacred confines of traditional Christian
iconography was, as we can still intuit from
his works, an intensely personal one’ (1975,
p14). As indeed was the work of the great
British romantic painter Turner, where he
used landscape painting as an arbitrator to the
Fig – 5. Joseph Mallord William Turner - Sun realisation of the divine. His subject matter
Setting over a Lake (ca. 1840; Oil on canvas,) could generally not be regarded as spiritual
and especially religious, yet he sought to express the power of the divine, the ethereal
spirit in landscape. His visionary analysis of landscape for which he became so well
respected as one of the greatest romantic interpreters of nature, in particular his
unrivalled ability of his painting of light, as suggested earlier that Greek iconography
used light to express divinity, often in the form of the halo. Although his earlier works
could be interpreted as figurative, it is also true to say his later works become
increasingly abstract and amorphous. He saw the natural world as un-mastered by man,

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