To all who are passionately dedicated
to the search for new "epiphanies" of beauty
so that through their creative work as artists
they may offer these as gifts to the world.
"God saw all that he had made, and it was very good" (Genesis
1:31)
The artist, image of God the Creator
1. None can sense more deeply than you artists, ingenious
creators of beauty that you are, something of the pathos
with which God at the dawn of creation looked upon the
work of his hands. A glimmer of that feeling has shone so
often in your eyes when-like the artists of every
age-captivated by the hidden power of sounds and words,
colours and shapes, you have admired the work of your
inspiration, sensing in it some echo of the mystery of
creation with which God, the sole creator of all things, has
wished in some way to associate you.
That is why it seems to me that there are no better words
than the text of Genesis with which to begin my Letter to
you, to whom I feel closely linked by experiences reaching
far back in time and which have indelibly marked my life. In
writing this Letter, I intend to follow the path of the fruitful
dialogue between the Church and artists which has gone on
unbroken through two thousand years of history, and which
still, at the threshold of the Third Millennium, offers rich
promise for the future.
In fact, this dialogue is not dictated merely by historical
accident or practical need, but is rooted in the very essence
of both religious experience and artistic creativity. The
opening page of the Bible presents God as a kind of
exemplar of everyone who produces a work: the human
craftsman mirrors the image of God as Creator. This
relationship is particularly clear in the Polish language
because of the lexical link between the words stwórca
(creator) and twórca (craftsman).
What is the difference between "creator" and "craftsman"?
The one who creates bestows being itself, he brings
something out of nothing-ex nihilo sui et subiecti, as the Latin
puts it-and this, in the strict sense, is a mode of operation
which belongs to the Almighty alone. The craftsman, by
contrast, uses something that already exists, to which he
gives form and meaning. This is the mode of operation
peculiar to man as made in the image of God. In fact, after
saying that God created man and woman "in his image" (cf.
Gn 1:27), the Bible adds that he entrusted to them the task
of dominating the earth (cf. Gn 1:28). This was the last day
of creation (cf. Gn 1:28-31). On the previous days, marking
as it were the rhythm of the birth of the cosmos, Yahweh
had created the universe. Finally he created the human
being, the noblest fruit of his design, to whom he subjected
the visible world as a vast field in which human
inventiveness might assert itself.
God therefore called man into existence, committing to him
the craftsman's task. Through his "artistic creativity" man
appears more than ever "in the image of God", and he
accomplishes this task above all in shaping the wondrous
"material" of his own humanity and then exercising creative
dominion over the universe which surrounds him. With
loving regard, the divine Artist passes on to the human artist
a spark of his own surpassing wisdom, calling him to share
in his creative power. Obviously, this is a sharing which
leaves intact the infinite distance between the Creator and
the creature, as Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa made clear:
"Creative art, which it is the soul's good fortune to entertain,
is not to be identified with that essential art which is God
himself, but is only a communication of it and a share in
it".(1)
That is why artists, the more conscious they are of their
"gift", are led all the more to see themselves and the whole
of creation with eyes able to contemplate and give thanks,
and to raise to God a hymn of praise. This is the only way
for them to come to a full understanding of themselves, their
vocation and their mission.
The special vocation of the artist
2. Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the
term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are
entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain
sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece.
It is important to recognize the distinction, but also the
connection, between these two aspects of human activity.
The distinction is clear. It is one thing for human beings to be
the authors of their own acts, with responsibility for their
moral value; it is another to be an artist, able, that is, to
respond to the demands of art and faithfully to accept art's
specific dictates.(2) This is what makes the artist capable of
producing objects, but it says nothing as yet of his moral
character. We are speaking not of moulding oneself, of
forming one's own personality, but simply of actualizing
one's productive capacities, giving aesthetic form to ideas
conceived in the mind.
The distinction between the moral and artistic aspects is
fundamental, but no less important is the connection
between them. Each conditions the other in a profound way.
In producing a work, artists express themselves to the point
where their work becomes a unique disclosure of their own
being, of what they are and of how they are what they are.
And there are endless examples of this in human history. In
shaping a masterpiece, the artist not only summons his work
into being, but also in some way reveals his own personality
by means of it. For him art offers both a new dimension and
an exceptional mode of expression for his spiritual growth.
Through his works, the artist speaks to others and
communicates with them. The history of art, therefore, is not
only a story of works produced but also a story of men and
women. Works of art speak of their authors; they enable us
to know their inner life, and they reveal the original
contribution which artists offer to the history of culture.
The artistic vocation in the service of beauty
3. A noted Polish poet, Cyprian Norwid, wrote that "beauty
is to enthuse us for work, and work is to raise us up".(3)
The theme of beauty is decisive for a discourse on art. It
was already present when I stressed God's delighted gaze
upon creation. In perceiving that all he had created was
good, God saw that it was beautiful as well.(4) The link
between good and beautiful stirs fruitful reflection. In a
certain sense, beauty is the visible form of the good, just as
the good is the metaphysical condition of beauty. This was
well understood by the Greeks who, by fusing the two
concepts, coined a term which embraces both: kalokagathía,
or beauty-goodness. On this point Plato writes: "The power
of the Good has taken refuge in the nature of the
Beautiful".(5)
It is in living and acting that man establishes his relationship
with being, with the truth and with the good. The artist has a
special relationship to beauty. In a very true sense it can be
said that beauty is the vocation bestowed on him by the
Creator in the gift of "artistic talent". And, certainly, this too
is a talent which ought to be made to bear fruit, in keeping
with the sense of the Gospel parable of the talents (cf. Mt
25:14-30).
Here we touch on an essential point. Those who perceive in
themselves this kind of divine spark which is the artistic
vocation-as poet, writer, sculptor, architect, musician, actor
and so on-feel at the same time the obligation not to waste
this talent but to develop it, in order to put it at the service of
their neighbour and of humanity as a whole.
The artist and the common good
4. Society needs artists, just as it needs scientists,
technicians, workers, professional people, witnesses of the
faith, teachers, fathers and mothers, who ensure the
growth of the person and the development of the community
by means of that supreme art form which is "the art of
education". Within the vast cultural panorama of each nation,
artists have their unique place. Obedient to their inspiration
in creating works both worthwhile and beautiful, they not
only enrich the cultural heritage of each nation and of all
humanity, but they also render an exceptional social service
in favour of the common good.
The particular vocation of individual artists decides the
arena in which they serve and points as well to the tasks
they must assume, the hard work they must endure and the
responsibility they must accept. Artists who are conscious
of all this know too that they must labour without allowing
themselves to be driven by the search for empty glory or the
craving for cheap popularity, and still less by the calculation
of some possible profit for themselves. There is therefore
an ethic, even a "spirituality" of artistic service, which
contributes in its way to the life and renewal of a people. It
is precisely this to which Cyprian Norwid seems to allude in
declaring that "beauty is to enthuse us for work, and work
is to raise us up".
Art and the mystery of the Word made flesh
5. The Law of the Old Testament explicitly forbids
representation of the invisible and ineffable God by means
of "graven or molten image" (Dt 27:15), because God
transcends every material representation: "I am who I am"
(Ex 3:14). Yet in the mystery of the Incarnation, the Son of
God becomes visible in person: "When the fullness of time
had come, God sent forth his Son born of woman" (Gal 4:4).
God became man in Jesus Christ, who thus becomes "the
central point of reference for an understanding of the
enigma of human existence, the created world and God
himself".(6)
This prime epiphany of "God who is Mystery" is both an
encouragement and a challenge to Christians, also at the
level of artistic creativity. From it has come a flowering of
beauty which has drawn its sap precisely from the mystery
of the Incarnation. In becoming man, the Son of God has
introduced into human history all the evangelical wealth of
the true and the good, and with this he has also unveiled a
new dimension of beauty, of which the Gospel message is
filled to the brim.
Sacred Scripture has thus become a sort of "immense
vocabulary" (Paul Claudel) and "iconographic atlas" (Marc
Chagall), from which both Christian culture and art have
drawn. The Old Testament, read in the light of the New, has
provided endless streams of inspiration. From the stories of
the Creation and sin, the Flood, the cycle of the Patriarchs,
the events of the Exodus to so many other episodes and
characters in the history of salvation, the biblical text has
fired the imagination of painters, poets, musicians,
playwrights and film-makers. A figure like Job, to take but
one example, with his searing and ever relevant question of
suffering, still arouses an interest which is not just
philosophical but literary and artistic as well. And what
should we say of the New Testament? From the Nativity to
Golgotha, from the Transfiguration to the Resurrection, from
the miracles to the teachings of Christ, and on to the events
recounted in the Acts of the Apostles or foreseen by the
Apocalypse in an eschatological key, on countless
occasions the biblical word has become image, music and
poetry, evoking the mystery of "the Word made flesh" in the
language of art.
In the history of human culture, all of this is a rich chapter of
faith and beauty. Believers above all have gained from it in
their experience of prayer and Christian living. Indeed for
many of them, in times when few could read or write,
representations of the Bible were a concrete mode of
catechesis.(7) But for everyone, believers or not, the works
of art inspired by Scripture remain a reflection of the
unfathomable mystery which engulfs and inhabits the world.
A fruitful alliance between the Gospel and art
6. Every genuine artistic intuition goes beyond what the
senses perceive and, reaching beneath reality's surface,
strives to interpret its hidden mystery. The intuition itself
springs from the depths of the human soul, where the
desire to give meaning to one's own life is joined by the
fleeting vision of beauty and of the mysterious unity of
things. All artists experience the unbridgeable gap which
lies between the work of their hands, however successful
it may be, and the dazzling perfection of the beauty glimpsed
in the ardour of the creative moment: what they manage to
express in their painting, their sculpting, their creating is no
more than a glimmer of the splendour which flared for a
moment before the eyes of their spirit.
Believers find nothing strange in this: they know that they
have had a momentary glimpse of the abyss of light which
has its original wellspring in God. Is it in any way surprising
that this leaves the spirit overwhelmed as it were, so that it
can only stammer in reply? True artists above all are ready
to acknowledge their limits and to make their own the words
of the Apostle Paul, according to whom "God does not dwell
in shrines made by human hands" so that "we ought not to
think that the Deity is like gold or silver or stone, a
representation by human art and imagination" (Acts 17:24,
29). If the intimate reality of things is always "beyond" the
powers of human perception, how much more so is God in
the depths of his unfathomable mystery!
The knowledge conferred by faith is of a different kind: it
presupposes a personal encounter with God in Jesus
Christ. Yet this knowledge too can be enriched by artistic
intuition. An eloquent example of aesthetic contemplation
sublimated in faith are, for example, the works of Fra
Angelico. No less notable in this regard is the ecstatic lauda,
which Saint Francis of Assisi twice repeats in the chartula
which he composed after receiving the stigmata of Christ on
the mountain of La Verna: "You are beauty... You are
beauty!".(8) Saint Bonaventure comments: "In things of
beauty, he contemplated the One who is supremely
beautiful, and, led by the footprints he found in creatures, he
followed the Beloved everywhere".(9)
A corresponding approach is found in Eastern spirituality
where Christ is described as "the supremely Beautiful,
possessed of a beauty above all the children of earth".(10)
Macarius the Great speaks of the transfiguring and liberating
beauty of the Risen Lord in these terms: "The soul which
has been fully illumined by the unspeakable beauty of the
glory shining on the countenance of Christ overflows with
the Holy Spirit... it is all eye, all light, all countenance".(11)
Every genuine art form in its own way is a path to the
inmost reality of man and of the world. It is therefore a
wholly valid approach to the realm of faith, which gives
human experience its ultimate meaning. That is why the
Gospel fullness of truth was bound from the beginning to
stir the interest of artists, who by their very nature are alert
to every "epiphany" of the inner beauty of things.
The origins
7. The art which Christianity encountered in its early days
was the ripe fruit of the classical world, articulating its
aesthetic canons and embodying its values. Not only in their
way of living and thinking, but also in the field of art, faith
obliged Christians to a discernment which did not allow an
uncritical acceptance of this heritage. Art of Christian
inspiration began therefore in a minor key, strictly tied to the
need for believers to contrive Scripture-based signs to
express both the mysteries of faith and a "symbolic code"
by which they could distinguish and identify themselves,
especially in the difficult times of persecution. Who does not
recall the symbols which marked the first appearance of an
art both pictorial and plastic? The fish, the loaves, the
shepherd: in evoking the mystery, they became almost
imperceptibly the first traces of a new art.
When the Edict of Constantine allowed Christians to declare
themselves in full freedom, art became a privileged means
for the expression of faith. Majestic basilicas began to
appear, and in them the architectural canons of the pagan
world were reproduced and at the same time modified to
meet the demands of the new form of worship. How can
we fail to recall at least the old Saint Peter's Basilica and the
Basilica of Saint John Lateran, both funded by Constantine
himself? Or Constantinople's Hagia Sophia built by Justinian,
with its splendours of Byzantine art?
While architecture designed the space for worship,
gradually the need to contemplate the mystery and to
present it explicitly to the simple people led to the early forms
of painting and sculpture. There appeared as well the first
elements of art in word and sound. Among the many themes
treated by Augustine we find De Musica; and Hilary of
Poitiers, Ambrose, Prudentius, Ephrem the Syrian, Gregory
of Nazianzus and Paulinus of Nola, to mention but a few,
promoted a Christian poetry which was often of high quality
not just as theology but also as literature. Their poetic work
valued forms inherited from the classical authors, but was
nourished by the pure sap of the Gospel, as Paulinus of
Nola put it succinctly: "Our only art is faith and our music
Christ".(12) A little later, Gregory the Great compiled the
Antiphonarium and thus laid the ground for the organic
development of that most original sacred music which takes
its name from him. Gregorian chant, with its inspired
modulations, was to become down the centuries the music
of the Church's faith in the liturgical celebration of the
sacred mysteries. The "beautiful" was thus wedded to the
"true", so that through art too souls might be lifted up from
the world of the senses to the eternal.
Along this path there were troubled mo
ments. Precisely on the issue of depicting the Christian mystery, there arose in
the early centuries a bitter controversy known to history as
"the iconoclast crisis". Sacred images, which were already
widely used in Christian devotion, became the object of
violent contention. The Council held at Nicaea in 787, which
decreed the legitimacy of images and their veneration, was
a historic event not just for the faith but for culture itself. The
decisive argument to which the Bishops appealed in order to
settle the controversy was the mystery of the Incarnation: if
the Son of God had come into the world of visible
realities-his humanity building a bridge between the visible
and the invisible- then, by analogy, a representation of the
mystery could be used, within the logic of signs, as a
sensory evocation of the mystery. The icon is venerated not
for its own sake, but points beyond to the subject which it
represents.(13)