Portrait of St. Luke in the Gospel Book of Otto III by Mary Elizabeth Podles

A Thousand Words

Portrait of St. Luke in the Gospel Book of Otto III

by Mary Elizabeth Podles

This Luke is not a conventional seated scholar, placidly penning his Gospel. This Luke is a mystic, a visionary in a state of exaltation, lifted up to heaven by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and set among visionaries. The frame around him seems to be made of living trees, bursting into leaf and then into a fantastic archway made of ribbons, garlands, birds, lambs, and even the winds, all in warm reds and browns. Within the archway, the Evangelist sits in a mandorla, an almond-shaped aureole usually reserved for Christ or Mary in glorified state. Luke, like Christ on the Judgment Seat, is seated on a rainbow. The mystical vision has set him outside of time and space. A contrasting icy green sets the mandorla off from the frame in an expressionistic burst of color.

Similarly expressionistic are Luke’s enormous eyes, which seem to stare through and beyond the viewer. His arms are raised ecstatically, hands gripping the clouds above as if the vision were a palpable, touchable fact. The clouds are a series of overlapping circles in greens and purples, seemingly exploding with rays of light, as if their jagged outlines can barely contain their energy. (Clouds like these appear nowhere else in contemporary manuscripts except once or twice in depictions of Pentecost, in which, as here, the Holy Spirit breaks through into the apostles’ vision.) 

THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:


Mary Elizabeth Podles is the retired curator of Renaissance and Baroque art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the author of A Thousand Words: Reflections on Art and Christianity (St. James Press, 2023). She and her husband Leon, a Touchstone senior editor, have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a contributing editor for Touchstone.

Print &
Online Subscription

Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!

Online
Subscription

Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!

bulk subscriptions

Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.

Transactions will be processed on a secure server.


more on art from the online archives

33.2—March/April 2020

Christ Chapel at Hillsdale

An Architectural Sign of Mere Christianity by Michael Ward

32.4—July/August 2019

Sojourner Knight

on Single-Mindedness in Durer's Ritter, Tod, und Teufel by Anthony Costello

30.3—May/June 2017

St. Luke the Evangelist

by Mary Elizabeth Podles


more from the online archives

24.4—July/August 2011

Global Power Grab

The Cultural Marxists’ Strategic Assault on Religion, Life & Family by Patrick F. Fagan

22.6—July/August 2009

Samurai Bioethics

on a Noble Defense Doomed by Darwinian Materialism by John G. West

28.2—March/April 2015

Facing God

on Divine Worship & the Natural Limits of Community by David Mills

calling all readers

Please Donate

"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand

"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor

Support Touchstone

00