A Reflection on a Painting Detail

 

Recently my wife, my mother-in-law and I went to The Cloisters.  My wife and I enjoy thoroughly The Cloisters.  It is a museum of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.    The Cloisters is a reconstruction of  large segments of abandoned ruins of European medieval monasteries and churches  on the Palisade in northern Manhattan, overlooking the Hudson River. It houses an exquisite collection of Medieval Church art. You can read more about it here.During our recent visit, this painting gripped me:  St. Michael Slaying the Anti-Christ:

Artist: Master of Belmonte (Spanish, Aragon, active ca. 1460–90) Date: 1450–1500 Culture: North Spanish Medium: Tempera and oil on wood Dimensions: Overall: 85 1/2 x 47 in. (217.2 x 119.4 cm) Classification: Paintings-Panels Credit Line: The Cloisters Collection, 1955

 

The portrayal of the anti-Christ is the reason I was taken aback. This is the photo I took of the detail:

What is the meaning of the anti-Christ’s body with reptilian arms and especially the leering, grinning faces from his body?

First, this portrayal reminded me of 20th Century Modern as it is akin to surrealism. 

Second, this portrayal is non-Biblical and rare because Michael defeats the devil (Revelation 12:7), not anti-Christ, though, we could say the anti-Christ is  devilish.

Third, it looks as if the figure of the anti-Christ is guiding Michael’s spear into his/her/it’s mouth.

Adding up those 3 observations comes this conclusion: this portrayal is lurid.  One of the definitions of lurid is:  “very vivid in color, especially so as to create an unpleasantly harsh or unnatural effect”.  This lurid portrayal is clearly contrasted with St. Michael, splendid in the whole armor of God, an angel, powerful and resplendent.  Yet, before this, the anti-Christ, sitting in the Temple, saying he is the Christ, redefining sound doctrine was certainly well hidden in his faux beauty.  As the anti-Christ seems to guide Michael’s spear, in an almost phallic way, this foul beast is now shown for his/her/its true colors, but it’s true lurid colors is flesh without spirit and the Holy Spirit, every part of the body leering forth its utterly narcissistic pleasures.  C. S. Lewis, in The Screwtape Letters, his fiction of letters between a chief tempter in hell and a sub-tempter novice, says this:

“Humans are amphibians– half spirit and half animal…As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for as to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation– the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks”

C. S. Lewis also calls the human body, “those vast and perilous estates” which we think we own and control and the anti-Christ sets up his own religious rule that says, Yes, you do and you can be like God, controlling good and evil.  Like an amphibian with the Sword of the Spirit, that is, the Word of God thrust down anti-Christ’s foul mouth of teaching heresy, he mutates into pure flesh, even grinning from the crotch.  That grin is surely the smirk of our lustful times. The anti-Christ’s message is lawless, see 2 Thessalonians 2:3, that is without the Law of God showing us our sin, so that man can not see his Savior, Jesus, the Son of the Father, light from light, very God from very God (Nicene Creed).  Notice the devilish lie in Lewis’ depiction:  “constancy…is undulation”.  It is not!  Constancy is change?! This is what the whole vain dark world has been teaching and screeching about for along time now.  Constancy is steadfastness in the Lord’s steadfast love for us in Christ Jesus which purifies all our loves: and so:

“The night is far gone;  the day is at hand.  So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” (Romans 12: 13).