Jesus’ Back and Biblical Dogs
January 8th, 2007 by Menachem Wecker
Yesterday, I visited the Frick to catch the Tiepolo show on its final day. The 70 pieces in the exhibit, “Domenico Tiepolo (1727–1804): A New Testament,” from Tiepolo’s body of more than 300 New Testament works, were completely overwhelming.
In this series, Tiepolo has arguably done more for religious art than any other painter. His paintings show biblical narratives, but they are interpretations that are doubly far ahead of their time. “Jesus Taking Leave of His Mother” shows Mary looking hysterically away from Jesus as her attendents surround her with arms and feet aflutter in horror. Tiepolo’s most brilliant move is to show Jesus with his back facing the viewer. Although the catalog authors argue this relates to the text of Jairus (LK: 8 and Mk: 5), it seems to me that Jesus’ mother and siblings may feel alienated after Jesus sends them the message that he holds them no dearer than any of his followers (MK: 3).
He makes this move even as almost every other painter who had ever depicted Jesus did so by making Jesus the central figure in the composition. Not only does Tiepolo often show Jesus with his back turned as a passive character, but he also populates his scenes with dogs and disinterested characters so caught up in their personal narratives that they remain oblivious to the Narrative.
Tiepolo often crops these characters and animals so that only a man’s arm is visible here and a dog’s tail and rear there. In these two moves–displacing Jesus from a central role in the narrative and focusing instead on supporting actors–Tiepolo frees himself from the shackles of religious art conventions. Ernst would later suggest a similar departure in “The Blessed Virgin Chastises the Infant Jesus Before Three Witnesses: A.B., P.E. and the Artist,” albeit more sacriligeously.
But Tiepolo reminds his viewers that even though the bible tends to imply that only one event happened at a time–who cares, after all, who ate dinner as the Red Sea split?–the events recorded are only one particular moment in one particular place. It does no disservice to the saints and villians of the scripture to admit that there may have been dogs and oblivious characters present.
[…] Many will consider Nes’ work offensive and sacrilegious for daring to displace biblical stories from their pedestals. But as I wrote about Tiepolo, it is important to remember that biblical stories, even within the logic of their own narratives, were about real people. Nes is not only provocatively suggesting that there was something homeless in Abraham — indeed he did flee his home and become the wandering Jew — but also that there is something to be canonized in the daily sacrifices of otherwise unexpectedly glamorous and heroic people. […]