A CURSE REVERSED: TOWARDS A VISUA L ECUMENISM MATTH EW M ILLINER I was still in the bonds of my old Evangelical faith; and, in 1858, it was, with me, Protestantism or nothing: The crisis of the whole turn of my thoughts being one Sunday morning, at Turin, when, from before Paul Veronese's Queen of Sheba, Remarks given on an occasion celebrating the and under a quite overwhelmed sense of his God-given power, I went away to a Wheaton College art historian E. john Walford, Waldensian chapel, and there a squeaking idiot was preaching to an audience held at Wheaton College on October 6, 2012, in of seventeen old women and three louts that they were the only children of God coniunction with the publication of Art as Spiritual in Turin . . 3 Perception: Essays in Honor of E.john Walford (Crossway Books: 2012}. Imagine the scene for a moment: Ruskin bathes in aesthetic glory on a Sunday morning be- fore Veronese's cataract of color. The year was 1858. The place He is amazed at th'e artist's God was Turin, Italy. The person was given power. But, it being Sunday john Ruskin, the great evangelical morning, he reluctantly extracts art historian and social reform- himself to fulfill his Sabbath er-but he was not to be evan- obligation, which-of course- gelical for long. Ruskin's evangeli- means attending a Protestant cal formation is what causes the church. However, the Waldensians Bible to be referenced on almost (this proto-Protestant sect was every page of his voluminous the best Ruskin could do) were works. But exposure to higher so aesthetically barren, and the biblical criticism and studies in sermon so hopelessly narrow, geology threatened that youthful that the contrast between Ruskin's faith. The most effective threat, art experience and his formally however, came from his aesthetic "religious" one is unbearable. The education. Ruskin's travel with only way that Ruskin could pro- his family to Europe, especially test that soul-crushing disjunction Venice, inaugurated what we was to renounce evangelicalism. might call (riffing on Mark Noll's He called it his "unconversion." publication 1) the scandal of the This is to say, his eyes outgrew evangelical eye. his soul. To be sure, Ruskin translated the To be sure, as Michael glory of Venice into a language evangelicals could Wheeler's Ruskin's God understand. "Never had a city a more glorious Bible," persuasively argues, it was too late for Ruskin. He could not neatly "unconvert" because he told his British readers, describing Saint Marks his evangelicalism was too deeply rooted, Wheeler sees too many references to faith Cathedral. "The skill and the treasure of the East had in the later Ruskin, and the leitmotif of Ruskin's lifelong faith, furthermore, is the biblical gilded every letter, and illumined every page, till the glory of Solomon, as reflected by Veroriese. 4 We might also add that Turin is an ironic Book-Temple shone from afar off like the star of the place for an aesthetic unconversion, it being the city that hosts the ultimate warrant for Magi." 2 But then came the showdown in Turin, and it aesthetic practice: The Shroud of Turin, a proto-photographic replica of the face of happened before Paolo Veronese's sprawling canvas, infinitude itself. But for Ruskin, the Shroud must have been too Catholic. "Whoever loves The Queen of Sheba before Solomon. Here is how beauty," lamented the Protestant theologian Gerhard Nebel, "will, like Winckelmann, Ruskin related the experience: freeze in the barns of the Reformation and go over to Rome." 5 But Ruskin's evangelicalism had instilled in him a virulent strain of anti-Catholicism. Love of beauty therefore doomed Ruskin to theological and aesthetic limbo: Too visually sophisticated to be evangelical, and too suspicious of Popery to be Catholic. Having told this story of the curse of the evangelical eye, let me now untell it. The year was 1972. The place was Milan, Italy (not too far from Turin). The person was a dif- ferent john-not Ruskin, but Walford, an art historian. (Walford recently retired from his 30 years of teaching at Wheaton College where, I should add, he taught mel. Maria, who was to become John's wife, had come to Christ as an evangelical in her years in Cambridge, but upon return to her Catholic family in Milan, she discovered she would have to pay a price to keep her newfound faith. She had to read the Bible in secret, and 20 Xll:2 2012 her support networks-strong in England-were person of Francis Schaeffer, they found a Protestant mind eager to engage culture and to falling apart in Italy. But there was one minister in reflect on art. Schaeffer's 1973 Art and the Bible was a mere pamphlet and claimed to be Milan, Harvey Woodson, a Protestant missionary. nothing more. But it did much to dismantle evangelical suspicions. One next step would He had worked for years in Italy, a longside his fam- be to write world-class art history, whichjohn W alford was soon to do. It was Francis ily, without seeing fruit in his ministry; but were it not Schaeffer who married john and M aria in the Romanesque Church in Oilon, Switzerland, for his presence and his support, Maria believes, the very church where the advisor to john Calvin, Willam Fare I, the fervent iconoclast, she might not have survived. john Walford had vis- had preached the destruction of images. Consider, therefore, the image of john and Maria ited the congregation led by Harvey Woodson and emerging from those stone walls. In the very church where a Reformed congregation once to hear john relate the story is to notice similarities had mandated the removal of images, comes, 400 years later, a man of Reformed faith with Ruskin's tale. Here was another visit to a small on his way to work with ano ther Reformed art historian, Hans Rookmaaker; they were to Protestant minority in a broader Catholic Ita ly. Not engage in that very thing that Calvin himself, in one unfortunate moment, understood to be surprisingly, not many people were in attendance the pinnacle of idleness: a life spent looking at paintings 6 at Harvey Woodson's church, less, in fact, than at Ruskin's Waldensian congregation. After his doctoral work at Cambridge University, when the Walfords faced the prospect of moving to suburban Illinois, all of their friends and family advised against the journey But the way that john Walford related this story to such a cu ltural desert. Michae l Jaffe, John's Cambridge advisor, certainly cautioned could not have been more different from the way against it. j ohn and Maria had had the best aesthetic educations in the heart of Europe; john Ruskin did. Walford looked around at the smat- in Wheaton they would aesthetically starve. But at this crucia l stage of their li fe, Maria's tering of people-Fii§ lame, the crippled, the out- . reply was just as firm. She suggested that that might be exactly why they should go. casts who gathered in that darkened, unimpressive They had been given so much, and could therefore give it away. The same compas- Italian Protestant church-and he did the reverse of sion extended towards Protestants in Milan was also extended to Protestants in Illinois. mockery. He Roger Lundin once warned that an evangelical turned this ex- temptation-in the recently-won enthusiasm for the perience with arts-was to swallow Romantic understand ings o f the outcast of artistic creation who lesale 7 But the art historical M ilan into an ballast to such enthusiasm offered to us by those occasion for like john Wa lford has enabled us to look before marveling at Romanticism to see the rich ways that art has the universality been used w ithin the Protestant fold to widen our of the gospel understanding of what art can (and cannot) do. Art for the least historical consciousness has enabled a necessary of these. He grounding for evangelical interest in the arts, some- didn't declaim thing still needed- sometimes desperately-today. "a squeak- ing idiot was preach- ing to an ART HISTORY AFTER Mf(AN audience of The "where are we now" writing genre is all too seventeen old frequently indulged in. Too often it is more "what women and have I been reading lately" rather than a genuine three louts," assessment of the current state of research and but instead practice. Nevertheless I'm going to give it a try and admired the attempt to assess what has come from what Mark faithfulness of Noll calls "a boomlet in evangelical art history [that] the Woodson rests squarely on the work of the Dutch Reformed family, who became hi s lifelong friends. The scho lar Hans Rookmaaker."8 By the 1990s, a volume edited by Paul Corby Finney, Seeing W oodsons were to experience much suffering in Beyond the Word, boasted an impressive range of essays exploring the Calvinist visual their lives, testifying to Christ's fai thfulness through tradition. "It was really [Calvin's] associates and followers," argued Finney, "who put it all. I wonder: if john Ruskins "unconversion" in into iconoclastic practice Calvin's literary invective against idolatry . ..."9 Which is to Turin cursed the evangelical eye, then perhaps say, in regard to the beeldenstorm- the iconoclastic fury that swept Europe- blame the john Walford's merciful disposition to a similar Calvinist, not Calvin. Such art histori cal efforts were supported by the philosophical work congregation in Milan contributed to the li fting of of N icholas Wolterstorff, who exposed the insidious cult of high art,10 and the theological that curse. Quite a thesis, to be sure, and certainly efforts of jeremy Begbie, who liberated Protestants from thei r Tillichian captivityn Then melodramatic, but when countering john Ruskin, noth- there was. Bill Dyrness' formidable histo rical survey, Reformed Theology and Visual Culture}2 ing less than melodrama w ill suffice. w hich has now been followed up with his Poetic Theology,13 pushing the project wel l into the twenty-first century. I think the latter book fairly could be ca lled a Summa of Protestant M aybe we could also see in that moment a taking aesthetics. Timothy Gorringe further developed this direction with his insistence that "There o f the evangelica l art historica l to rch from where is not simply an iconoclasm, but also an iconpoiesis in the Reformation which understands john Ruskin left it. Fol lowing a visit to Harvey that the world mirrors the divine in its banal, day-to-day reality."14 Much of this work, inter- Woodson's church, john and Maria hopped on estingly enough, is explic itly indebted to the scholarship of j ohn Walford, in particular, his a train for Switzerland, and the transition-from distillation of the Protestant vision in the work of jacob van Ruisdael in a book which Noll the oppressive urban atmosphere to the A lpine said "may be the best academic book ever published by a Wheaton professor . . . [and] glory- was like traveling from Hell to Heaven certainly the most beautiful."15 itself. They were headed to L'Abri w here, in the Xll:2 2012 21  REFORMED HUBRIS Make no mistake-Rembrandt may have, as the catalogue intriguingly argues, altered the There are moments, however, when this new face of Christ based on live jewish models from Amsterdam. But the exact features of Reformed confidence may slip into hubris. Some art Christ$ face are secondary to the question of whether or not one is permitted to depict historians have gone so far as to suggest not only Christ at all, and on this the Reformed tradition is explicit and consistent 20 Why could that Protestants have a distinct and vibrant aesthetic Rembrandt, a Reformed Christian with Mennonite sympathies, paint Christ in the first place2 tradition, but that theirs is the only one that offers As the catalog in question itself reveals, this was possible because of the influence of the on accurate portrait of jesus. Consider, for example, older Christian tradition of icons 21 The flood of Eastern images into Rembrandt$ northern --, the deservedly praised recent museum exhibition Europe was vast and this has been underestimated. The art historian Maryan Ainsworth on Rembrandt's Face of Christ. "Traditionally, when has written that "in some cases the assimilation of Byzantine models into the mainstream of northern European art was so thorough that the link to Eastern prototypes has virtually been lost." 22 Rembrandt's jesus was only possible because the medicine of Byzantine icons had been so thoroughly applied to the iconoclastic wound over the intervening centuries. Jacob van Ruisdael Consequently, by depicting jesus in a unique way, Rembrandt was indeed "breaking from tradition" 23 but not as the catalogue implies. He was breaking from his Reformed tradition, a break made possible by the Byzantine onehich he then adjusted. In other words, there is no need, when celebrating Protestant successes, to throw the Orthodox tradition under the bus; it was on that Orthodox bus that Protestants had inadvertently traveled. VISUAL ECUM ENI SM Risking hubris myself, I offer a suggestion: What if evangelical/Reformed theological maturity does not mean jealously insisting upon our own uniqueness, but instead em - phasizing our commonalities with other traditions? What if Christian aesthetic maturity means growing up into a wider, clearer ecumenical vision2 What if this visual ecumen- ism proved just as important for bringing the churches together as theological efforts2 If, as the art historian Alexander Nagel has suggested, the Reformation was primarily a dispute about images, 24 and if we care about church unity, then art history might have to be a primary interest for us, not a secondary stop after the theological work is done. The seeds of this idea can be found in the work of John Walford himself. In jacob Van Ruisdael and the Perception of Landscape, he pointed out that Ruisdael's "contempla- tive delight in the visible world was instilled by the influential Confession of Faith and Catechism of the Netherlands Reformed Churches." 25 But this does not mean it was unique. The same idea, Walford suggested, could be found in the Italian counter Reformers: "While this [spiritual view of nature] represented the official position of the Reformed Church, the diffeiences that separated Catholics, Calvinists, and Mennonites were in matters other than their conception of nature." 26 Should this threaten evangeli- cal Protestants? Only if we feel the need to jealously guard the distinction of our own tradition, in fear (and concealed envy) of another tradition's strength. How else are we to fathom the fact that jacob van Ruisdael's perception of landscape as a gateway to God's spiritual world feels perfectly Byzantine? As Henry Maguire relates in his recent book on the subject, this is how they saw the physical world as well 27 "For we depicting Christ," claims the catalog, "artists had see images in created things intimat ing to us dimly reflections of the divine," said john relied on rigidly copied prototypes and icons. of Damascus 28 I don't see how one can read Walford on Ruisdael, or even jonathan Rembrandt's groundbreaking innovations included his Edwards for that matter, 29 without recognizing precisely the same vision at work. use of a live model, most likely jewish, to portray a Christ embued with empathy, gentleness, grace and Because each of the great Christian traditions~Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox- faithfulness to nature." 16 That Rembrandt painted re- have been constructed on the myth of their ciwn uniqueness, many ideas would have to markably realistic portraits of Christ is true enough. be dismantled to advance this understanding. I'll conclude by doing just that, by criticiz- But the history of portraiture of Christ is, of course, ing not a Protestant but an Orthodox target: the Russian priest, mathematician, scien- considerably more complicated than a set-up for a tist, theologian, art historian, and martyr Pavel Florensky. I hesitate to do so, because Rembrandtian rescue, 17 and the words "permanency discovering Florensky as a graduate student was an intellectual thrill that for me at least and distance" are hardly sufficient to characterize has yet to be equaled. But in his wonderful book lconostasis, Florensky laid out an overly over one thousand yea rs of Byzantine portraiture stark aesthetic dichotomy, assigning to the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox traditions of Christ, however much that stereotype endures. their own distinct forms of art: "Where the [Catholic] oil painting will express the world The curious result of this overconfidence is that the in sensuous images, and the Protestant engraving will give us the world in rational sche- Reformed tradition today either offers a neo-icono- mata, the icon makes visually manifest the metaphysical essence of the event or person clastic agenda that refuses to depict Christ at all, 18 it depicts." 30 In pursuing this trichotomy, Florensky pointed out that the canvas yields to or the claim that the Protestant aesthetic tradition is the artist's hand, which he feels invites a degree of Catholic theological relativism. The so self-sufficient that only it (thanks to Rembrandt) engraving on the other hand, because of the promiscuous use of materials, "corresponds depicted Christ correctly-as a jew_~ 9 to Protestant individualism and freedom-or, more precisely to Protestant arbitrariness." 31 But the unyielding icon conveys a spiritual authority because of its inflexible board that denies relativism or arbitrariness. 22 Xt1:2 2012 This is, to be sure, a Goldilocks art history where yet unified Christian aesthetic, to which the different alternate tradition: "In the 16th century, the Dominican Gabriel Barletta expressed a normative assumption: 'Christ was dark."' Catholics are too hot, Protestants too cold, ond traditions, at the ir utter best, ascend. Full maturity Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth O rthodox icons are just right. But Florensky's insight (which for evangel icals has been a long time com- Century llaly: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style into engraving is actually ostute. He saw print as ing!) is not to see with Protestant, Orthodox, or (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19881, 57. representative of Protestantism because the carving Catholic eyes, but w ith the eyes of Christ. 18 "We are to make no image of Him. We should paint no pic- process of negation (what is cut) and affirmation tures of Him. If we were to know the visual image of Christ, He would have left us His visual image. He did not. And every (what is not cut) reflects Protestant German binary picture or portrait of Him is an invention, and as an invention, rat ionalism that secularizes reality, reducing it to it robs Him of His glory." Albert Mohler, Words From the Fire: its mere essentials.32 No honest assessment of the Moll hew). Milliner is Assislonl Professor of orl history ol Hearing the Voice of God in Ihe 10 Commandmenls(Chicago: Wheal on College. He is a graduate of Wheal on College, history of Protestantism-especially its German Prince/on Theological Seminary, and Prince/on University. Moody Publishers, 20091, 59. 19 Drawing on Visser'! Hooft's claim o f Rembrandts lcharacler- liberal variety with which Florensky was fami l- He blogs al millinerd.com islically Protestant) trans-institutional, personal faith, DeWitt iar-can deny that this chorge sometimes hit the writes: "Rembrandts reformation of the image of Jesus was target. However, the third time I was offered a print by no means a declaration of solidarity with any particular of an Orthodox monastery as part of a research Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind !Grand religious faction in Amsterdam; indeed, he left no evidence of visit, I had to rethink Florensky's trichotomy. Indeed, Rapids: Eerdmaans, 19941. Recently updated in a volume, jesus religious affiliation" 11421. Larry Silver and Shelly Perlave, who Chris/ and Ihe Life of Ihe Mind !Grand Rapids, Erdmaans, 20111, appear in the catalog as well, explore this complicated ques- Orthodoxy boasts a broad and dynamic print cul- featuring an Orthodox icon on the front cover! tion more completely in Rembrandt's Faith: Church and Temple ture, as evidenced by a wal k through the Byzantine 2 John Ruskin, E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, eds., in Ihe Dutch Golden Age (Stale College: Pennsylvania State Museum in Athens, which should be enough for us Works of)ohnRuskin, Vol. 10 !London: Allen, 1903-12), 141. University Press, 2009). Regardless of his precise ecclesial to wonder whether or not print per se necessarily 3 John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera: Leiters Ia the Workmen and allegiance !which is difficult to determine), Rembrandt clearly Labourers of Greal Britain: Volume the Fourth !New York: Bryan, embodied a Protestant aesthetic in service to Protestant entails a rationalistic reduction of reality.33 Taylor & Company, 18941, 9. patrons. 4 Michael Wheeler, Ruskin's God!Cambridge: Cambridge 20 Consider Co Ivins zero-sum game between God and images No doubt Florensky would have a reply to this University Press, 2006). in the /nslilules !Book One, Chapters XI and XIII, or the proliferation of prints within the Orthodox world. He 5 Cited in Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of Ihe Lord, Volume 1 Heidelberg Catechism's insistence that "Gad cannot and would probably say it signifies the corruption of the [Edinburgh: T& T Clark, 19821,69. should not be pictured in any way," even for purposes of 6 "Those who seek in scholarship nothing more than on honored teaching. Philip Benedict, "Calvinism as a Culture2 Preliminary Orthodox tradition, its Protestantization. But what if occupation with which to beguile the tedium of idleness Remarks on Calvinism and the Visual Arts," in Seeing Beyond we were able to prove that at the most advanced I would compare to those who pass their lives looking at the Word, 29. stages of the Byzantine Orthodox tradition, in the paintings." Joannis Calvini opera quae supersunl Omnia, W. 21 Such as the thirteenth century Serbian icon which was brought heart of Constantinople itself, the print aesthetic Baum, E. Cunitz, and E. Reuss, eds. !Brunswick and Berlin, 1863- to the Cathedral of Loon in 1249. Rembrandt and the Face of 19001, val. XII, 56. This quotation notwithstanding, Calvin- jesus, 121. reigned? This is exactly what Bissera Pentcheva and the Reformed tradition-did of course leave a legitimate, 22 Marian W. Ainsworth, "'A Ia fa<;on grece': The Encounter suggested in her latest book, The Sensuous /con.34 subsidiary place for aesthe tics Ito be discussed below). of Northern Renaissance Artists w ith Byzantine Icons" in We've long known that one of the primary analo- 7 This is because the evangelical attitude to the arts, according Byzantium: Foilh and Power (1261-1557) [New Haven: Yale gies for the early Christians was that icons operated to Lundin, is "the product of a union of specifically American University Press, 20051, 545. like a seal.35 The assertion was that the icons of a ttitudes toward social tradition, romantic aesthetic notions, 23 Lloyd DeWitt, "Testing Tradition Aga inst Nature: Rembrandts and fundamentalist view of culture." Roger Lundin, "Offspring Radical New Image of Jesus," in Lloyd Dewitt, ed. Rembrandt Christ do not depict God's divine nature- or even of an Odd Union: Evangelical Attitudes Towards the Arts," and the Face ofjesus, lll his human nature-instead they simply portray the in Fundamentalism and Modern America (Grand Rapids: 24 Alexander Nagel, The Controversy of Renaissance Arl composite person of Christ. This absolved them of Erdmaans, 19841, 138. Lundin's warning is ast_ute: "Because of !Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 20111. any claim to bear divine presence; the seal is what its skepticism about the relevance of history and·the historical 25 Walford, jacob Van Ruisdoel, 20 process, because of its desire to assign to art a special 26 Ibid, 20-21. matters, and the sealed materials were secondary. separate status, and because of ifs sense of alienation about 27 Henry Maguire, Nee/or and Illusion: Nolure in Byzantine Arl What Pentcheva accomplished was to show that both unadorned nature and mass culture, romantic theory has and Lileralure !Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). this seal theology is also reflected in art, and I'm offered an appealing sight to those of us whose aesthetic 28 John of Damascus, Andrew Louth, Irons., Three Treatises on the amazed that we Byzantine art historians did not see lenses have been ground, whether w e appreciate it or not, in Divine /mages !Creslwoad: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press), 99. this before. "Pressed" icons were just as prominent the shop o f American fundamentalism" llbid., 1441. 29 Jonathan Edwards, Typological Wrilings, The Works of 8 Mark Noll, "Reconsidering Christendom," in The Future of jonathan Edwards, Volume IIINew Haven: Yale University as Florensky's painted icons. The Byzantine world, in Christian Learning !Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 20081, 64. Press, 1993). other words, was a print, intaglio culture. In the wake 9 Paul Corby Finney, ed., Seeing Beyond the Word !Grand 30 Pavel Florensky, Donald Sheehan and O lga Andrejev, Irons., of Iconoclasm, "Byzantine visual culture canceled its Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 19991, 19. /canaslosis iCreslwaod: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 20001, links to the Hellenistic painting tradition ond estab- 10 Nicholas Wolterstorff, Arlin Aclion: Toward a Chris/ian 113. AeslheliciGrand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980). 31 Ibid, m lished a new idiom: relief icons." 36 Pentcheva goes so Jeremy Begbie, Voicing Creation's Praise !London: T& T Clark, 32 Ibid., 112. "Protestant philosophy is the situation of being far as to suggest that a bronze repousse icon was 1991). completely drunk oneself while compelling everyone else Ia the very one that would have hung above the Chalke 12 William Dyrness, Re formed Theology and Visual Culture: The be sober." Gate in Constantinople to celebrate the victory of Proleslonllmaginalion from Calvin lo EdwardsiCambridge: 33 "The printed illustrated proskynelaria and the sacred maps the iconophiles. So, print may be the quintessence of Cambridge University Press, 2004). were among the first printed matter produced in G reek lands 13 William Dyrness, Poetic Theology: God and the Poetics of in the mid-eighteenth century." From Byzantium Ia Modern Protestantism37-and if that is the case, the essence Everyday Life !Grand Rapids: Eerdmaans, 20111. Greece: Hellenic Arl in Adversity, 1453-1830 IBenaki Museum, of Protestantism is perfectly consistent with the most 14 Timothy Gorringe, Earthly Visions: Theology and Ihe Athens, 20051, 31. advanced Byzantine Christian aesthetic as well. Challenges of AriiNew Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). 34 Bissera Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and Ihe 15 Mark Noll, "Dutch Landscapes and a Wheaton Professor," Senses in Byzantium !University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania WhealonAiumniMagazineiWinter, 19921, 16. See E.John Stale University Press, 2010). All this is to say that new directio ns o f research Walford, jacob Van Ruisdael and Ihe Perception of Landscape, 35 "A seal is one thing, and its imprint another." Theodore of emerge when one goes to the art hi storica l record, !New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). Studios, On the Holy Icons, Ill, D, 9 -10 ; C. Roth. trans. not to defect because of a perceived inadequacy 16 Lloyd Dewitt, ed., Rembrandt and the Face of)esus iNew 36 Bissera Pentcheva, The Sensual/con, 88. las with Ruskin), or to artificia lly prove the differ- Haven: Yale University Press, 20111. The quotation is from the 37 "Popular Dutch art of the seventeenth century," That is prints, ences among the traditions los with Florensky), but dusk jacket and book advertisements. Though the book itself writes James Tanis, "was a natural evolution, drawing on both goes into considerable complexity, its use of the Byzantine religious and secular subject matter, was a natural evolution, to lovingly respect one's own tradition, to abide tradition as a fail is consistent throughout. developing because of the Reformed tradition, not in spite of w ithin it las did Walford), but also to joyfully indi- 17 The letter to Lentulus which spoke of Christ's features, it" !Seeing Beyond the Word, 395) cate commonalities when they appear. just as there including his "fair forehead" was indeed influential, but .that is, according to our Bibles, "one Lord, one fa ith, one influence can be overplayed !Rembrandt and the Face of jesus, 1221. Consider Michael Baxandall's evidence for the baptism," so perhaps there is a lso one variegated Xll:2 2012 23