Painted God
John McEwen
The Bible and Its Painters Bruce Bernard, with an Introduction by Lawrence Gowing (Orbis Publishing £15)
ruce Bernard's Photodiscovery was L./immediately recognised as a master- piece of its picture-book kind; and this follow up, in which he reveals the wonders of biblical painting to us with the same discernment and in much the same way, is another. It also has the advantage of being less specialised in its attractions; a book to serve a number of different functions and to satisfy any age group.
It can, for instance, be first described as being for children. This thought is en- couraged by the author's dedication to his godson at the outset, who may or may not be a child of course, but the book will sure- ly prove a godsend to parents. Not only is there a splendid array of full and half page
pictures in colour, but each one is accom- panied by a relevant gobbet from the Revis- ed (and most ecumenically acceptable) Standard Version, so that the story can be told or read without interruption. As a parent, frustrated till now in my searches for a new and acceptable pictorial version of the Bible, I 'speak with feeling — and gratitude. The pictures — it should be said with regard to their interest for children have been selected to entertain, as well as to instruct and inspire, to which end Bernard (as he admits) has gone at times against the grain of his own taste and conviction, though never uninterestingly or non- committally. There are superb pictorial eyewitness accounts throughout, the un- familiarity of many of them testifying to the sharp eyes and untiring research of the author: Hans Baldung's 15th-century vision of the Ark as a strong-box; 'The Flight of Cain' by Fernand Cormon (a teacher of Lautrec and Matisse), realism at its starkest; and another unfairly overlooked 19th-century artist, Briton Riviere, who makes a success of a rare and difficult sub- ject, 'The Miracle of the Gadarene Swine' — the last two pictures respectively (and wrongfully) found in the basements of the Luxembourg and the Tate.
But the book is also for schoolboys and students of art, serving equally as a general introduction to Western painting and a specalised study of its dominant subject. The choice of the pictures, an exemplary mixture of the familiar, unfamiliar and unknown, is ideal for this purpose, and sus- tained by remarkably good colour plates for this comparatively cheap price — 200 pic- tures by over 100 painters from the 13th to 20th centuries are reproduced. But hardly less to be commended are the sympathetic Introduction by Sir Lawrence Gowing (Slade Professor of Fine Art at University College, London), here back at the height of his considerable powers as a writer on art after the debacle of his woman's magazinish hagiography of Lucian Freud, and the entertaining biographical notes to each picture by Bruce Bernard — tucked, as in Photodiscovery, at the back. These notes, which amount to 25,000 words,
represent a usefully factual, spicily anec- dotal, potted history of art in themselves; their subject offering Bernard more scope as a writer than did Photodiscovery and his responses are humorous, partisan and delightfully free of academicism. 'The whale has certainly not enjoyed Jonah's stay and the latter's piety is as impressive as his red shirt,' is how he interprets Jan Breughel the Elder's description; But the picture's triumph,' he writes of Rubens's 'Samson and Delilah', 'is that it seems to have come into being without reflection, like a thunderclap'; 'The attribution of this picture [Rembrandt's 'Saul and David'] has been questioned but it is really only of academic interest whether one Rembrandt authority's assertion that it is by someone else is true or false, though we would of course like to praise the right painter.'
Most of all, therefore, this is a book for those who love painting, whether with dalliance and little learning or the expertise and passion of its author. 'Although I have tried not to impose any coherent moral or aesthetic censorship, the selection is unashamedly personal,' he writes in his Foreword, and remains true to this ad- mirable purpose throughout, in notes and pictorial selection alike. It is this vivacity, this self-expression, that makes his two books the works of art they indubitably are; and what an extraordinary and fascinating- ly juxtaposed collection of paintings he has gathered for this second one.
The order in terms of the Bible is chronological, the art that illustrates it necessarily, and revealingly, is not; thus Goya is aligned with Cranach the Elder, Rembrandt with Lord Leighton — such pairing or tripling of different artists demonstrating the variety of interpretations of a single story. No artist, apparently, has ever been put to the fire for heresy, which is amazing considering the liberties of inter- pretation revealed: almost no story has been depicted in strict accordance with the scripture, and each artistic age betrays its wider character, from the simple prayers of the early Renaissance to the thunderous evangelical sermons of industrial times. There are oddities for the grown ups as well as stories for the children, but Rembrandt is the book's hero, as Gowing points out and Bernard acknowledges — and how, on the strength of his two 'Descents from the Cross' alone, could it be otherwise.
This good book, for which we must thank the perception of its instigator and publisher, Martin Heller, as well, though not as much, as the artistry of its author, will surely turn people back to both the Bible and painting, and instill a love of the two of them in the minds of children, no doubt in many cases for the first time.
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