Product Code Database
A doubting Thomas is a skeptic who refuses to believe without direct personal experience—a reference to the Gospel of John's depiction of the Apostle Thomas, who, in John's account, refused to believe the resurrected Jesus had appeared to the ten other apostles until he could see and feel Jesus's Holy Wounds.
In art, the episode (formally called the Incredulity of Thomas) has been frequently depicted since at least the 15th century, with its depiction reflecting a range of theological interpretations.
Commentators have noted that John avoids saying whether Thomas actually did "thrust" his hand in. Before the Protestant Reformation the usual belief, reflected in artistic depictions, was that he had done so, which most Catholic writers continued to believe, while Protestant writers often thought that he had not.
Regardless of the question of whether Thomas had felt as well as "seen" the physical evidence of the Resurrection of Jesus, the Catholic interpretation was that, although Jesus asserts the superiority of those who have faith without physical evidence, he was nonetheless willing to show Thomas his wound, and let him feel it. This was used by theologians as biblical encouragement for the use of physical experiences such as , veneration of and ritual in reinforcing Christian beliefs.
Protestant theologians emphasized Jesus's statement of the superiority of "faith alone" (see sola fide), although the evangelical-leaning Anglican Thomas Hartwell Horne, in his widely read Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures (first published in 1818) treated Thomas's incredulity, which he extended somewhat to the other apostles, approvingly, as evidence both of the veracity of the gospels, as a "forger" would be unlikely to have invented it, and of their proper suspicion of the seemingly impossible, demonstrating their reliability as witnesses. In the early church, Gnostic authors were very insistent that Thomas did not actually examine Jesus, and elaborated on this in accounts, perhaps tending to push their non-Gnostic opponents in the other direction.
The theological interpretation of the episode has concentrated on it as a demonstration of the reality of the resurrection, but as early as the writings of the 4th- and 5th-century saints John Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria it had been given a eucharistic interpretation, seen as an allegory of the sacrament of the Eucharist, what remained a recurring theme in commentary.
The scene was used in a number of contexts in medieval art, including Byzantine icons. Where there was room all the apostles were often shown, and sometimes Thomas's acceptance of the Resurrection is shown, with Thomas kneeling and Jesus blessing him. This iconography leaves it unclear whether the moment shown follows an examination or not, but probably suggests that it does not, especially in Protestant art. From the late Middle Ages onwards a number of variations of the poses of the two figures occur (see gallery). The typical "touching" representation formed one of a number of scenes sometimes placed around a central Crucifixion of Jesus, and is one of the scenes shown on the Irish Muiredach's High Cross, and the subject of a large relief in the famous Romanesque art sculpted cloister at the Abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos. In works showing pairs of typologically related scenes from the Old and it could be paired with Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, but in a 10th-century Ottonian art ivory diptych it is paired with Moses receiving the Law, comparing both the two Biblical Testaments and the support for the faith from both textual "sacred writ" and physical evidences. In the later Middle Ages Jesus with one side of his robe pulled back, displaying the wound in his side and his other four wounds (called the ostentatio vulnerum), was taken from images with Thomas and turned into a pose adopted by Jesus alone, who often places his own fingers into the wound in his side. This form became a common feature of single iconic figures of Jesus and subjects such as the Last Judgement (where Bamberg Cathedral has an early example of about 1235), Christ in Majesty, the Man of Sorrows and Christ with the Arma Christi, and was used to emphasize Christ's suffering as well as the fact of his Resurrection.
In the Renaissance the famous sculpted pair of Christ and St. Thomas by Andrea del Verrocchio (1467–1483) for the Orsanmichele in Florence is the best known representation; the subject is rare in free-standing sculpture. This guild church also housed commercial tribunals, and the presentation of physical evidence gave the subject a particular relevance to courts and justice, and it appeared on many other buildings in Tuscany with judicial functions. The Medici family, heavily involved in the commission, also had a particular association with St Thomas, on Medici involvement in the commission, on justice and Medici patronage of Thomas; for justice also see though the painting by Salviati seems to reflect anti-Medici feeling in the 1540s.
The subject enjoyed a revival in popularity in Counter-Reformation art as an assertion of Catholic doctrine against Protestant rejection of the Catholic practices which the episode was held to support, and Protestant belief in "faith alone". In the Catholic interpretation, although Jesus asserts the superiority of those who have faith without physical evidence, he was nonetheless willing to show Thomas his wound, and let him feel it. The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio (c. 1601–1602) is now the most famous depiction (unusually showing Thomas to the viewer's right of Jesus), but there are many others, especially by the Utrecht Caravaggisti, painting in a Protestant environment, such as the Flemish Caravaggist Matthias Stom, whose two versions of the subject are now in Madrid and Bergamo. Both Rembrandt (Pushkin Museum) and Rubens (centrepiece of the Rockox Triptych, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp) also painted it.
The first version of the story is called the Madonna of the Girdle in art. An altarpiece by Palma Vecchio, now in the Brera Gallery in Milan, shows an intermediate version, with Thomas hurrying towards the other apostles, and the Virgin taking off her girdle. In other works Thomas is catching the falling girdle, or has received the girdle and holds it.
|
|
