Csornay Boldizsár - Hubai Péter szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 96. (Budapest, 2002)
KOVÁCS, ZOLTÁN: A New Representation of the Salvator Mundi from the workshop of Quentin Massys
the heavens. Parmenides portrayed the earthly and the other worlds as two concentric spheres, and also compared existence itself to a sphere. 64 The world is described as a sphere in the cosmology of Plato, too, since the most perfect of all forms was chosen by God at the time of Creation. 65 Pliny the Elder also held that globus is perfection itself, and the universe likewise takes this form. 66 For the Romans, the sphere was the attribute of Sol Invictus, as well. As a reduced model of the world, it became one of the insignia of the Roman emperors, signifying their power and majesty. Having overcome Licinius in the sign of the cross in 312, Constantinus had the imperial globe surmounted by a cross. 67 In Christian religious art, the orb is depicted carried by God the Father, Christ, the Mother of God, and in a few instances the archangels, as one of the regalia. 68 As an all-comprehensive solid, the sphere is a symbol of God's almightiness and omnipresence. 69 In several cases, the sphere held by Christ in His hand is more than simply a globe; it is the combination of a globe and the host of the Eucharist and is very often surmounted by a cross. 70 Thus the globe in the hand of Christ, a symbol of the universe, is associated not only with the idea of Christ being the King of Heaven but with the concept of salvation, as well. It was within this context that the globe became a perfect and necessary attribute of the representations of the Salvator Mundi. 1] It seems that Jan van Eyck himself introduced the motif of the gleaming crystal globe into the Netherlands, by turning disc-like, two-dimensional medieval globes into gleaming spheres. His interest in the naturalistic depiction of the translucent gleaming crystal is manifest already in the Ghent Altarpiece, where he depicted the gold-plated sceptre, inlaid with pearls, as being of crystal glass. 72 The tiny crystal globe appears for the first time in the hand of the Infant Christ in the Rolin Madonna, now in the 64 Fragments, 42-45 65 "And he gave to the world the figure which was suitable and also natural. Now to the animal which was to comprehend all animals, that figure was suitable which comprehends within itself all other figures. Wherefore he made the world in the form of a globe, round as from a lathe, having its extremes in every direction equidistant from the centre, the most peifect and the most like itself of all figures ; for he considered that the like is infinitely fairer than the unlike." (Timaeus, 33b. Translated by Benjamin Jowett.) 66 Naturalis história, 2, 2. 67 Cf. Prokopios, De aedificiis, I, ii, B 182. The globe surmounted by a cross appears as an orb and as a totius mundi imago for the first time as one of the insignia of the Holy Roman Emperors. In the Middle Ages it became a symbol primarily of the sovereignty of the rulers. Cf. P. E. Schramm, Sphaira, Globus, Reichsapfel . Wanderung und Wandelung eines Herrschaftszeichens von Caesar bis zu Elisabeth IL Ein Beitrag zum "Nachleben" der Antike, Stuttgart 1958.; Szimbólumtár. Jelképek, motívumok, témák az egyetemes és magyar kultúrából, ed. J. Pál and E. Újvári, Budapest 1997, 165. 68 Cf. G. Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art, New York 1954, 313; A keresztény művészet lexikona, ed. J. Seibert, Budapest 1986, 107. 69 D. Forstner, Die Welt der Symbole, Innsbruck-Wien-München 1967,65-6. Cf. D. Mahnke, Unendliche Sphäre und Allmittelpunkt, Halle 1927. 70 Carla Gottlieb made the observation that the motifs of the globe and the host are connected: Gottlieb, op. cit. (cfr. n. 10), 316. Cf. M. Schapiro, Two Romanesque Drawings in Auxerre and Some Iconographie Problems, in: Studies in Art and Literature for Belle da Costa Greene, Princeton 1954, 341-6.; W. W. S. Cook, The Earliest Painted Panels of Catalonia, The Art Bulletin 6 (1923), 38-40. 71 Cf. Kovács, op. cit. (cfr. n. 29), 105. 72 Pacht, op. cit. (cfr. n. 48), pl. 23.
