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contact:
malbon@vt.edu

Colleen Shantz is affiliated with St. Michael's College of the Toronto School of Theology.

Abstract: Salvador Dali’s "Christ of St. John of the Cross" and the Gospel of Luke share more than their subject matter. For one thing, both have been immensely popular in large part because of their beauty. For another, both use the work of earlier interpreters as negative inspiration for their own. In Dali’s case it was the slumped, lacerated corpus in Grünewald’s Isenheim altarpiece that inspired the antithetically ethereal beauty of the Christ of St. John who floats above the world. In Luke’s case it was the suffering and abandonment of Mark’s passion account that is transformed into acceptance and gracious selflessness. Finally, the creators of the later interpretations, as well as their earlier negative exemplars, were in conversation with the horrors of their own moments in history and reflect aesthetic choices on that basis. This paper ponders the efficacy of beauty as a means of dealing with horror and the pastoral role of art and gospel in the interpretation of history.

2005, Philadelphia


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