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
Employed mostly in the context of baptismal liturgy, in Early Christian times the gesture of blessing was expressed by the imposition of hands (impositio manus). 56 The later gesture, still in use today, of raising the hand derives from the antique posture associated with the act of speaking. This is understandable in view of the fact that the gesture of blessing was usually accompanied by spoken words. According to the so-called Latin rite, the blessing is expressed by the right hand raised with the palm outwards, the first three fingers held upright, and the last two bent. 57 Conversely, the blessing according to the so-called Greek rite is expressed by gesturing with the index, middle and little fingers held upright and the remaining two pressed against each other, 58 thus forming a chi-sigma Christogram (for XpicJTÓc). Alternatively, it was proposed that the three fingers held upright may refer to the secret of the Holy Trinity while the two pressed together may signify the confession of the twofold personality of Christ. 59 In medieval art both types can be found in the East as well as the West. However, the Latin formula was commonly used in art before the 8th century, when the Greek one was just gaining currency. 60 Discussing the subject exprofesso in the early 13th century, Pope Innocent III did not touch upon the two distinct formulae of expressing benedictio, instructing only to hold three fingers upright without specifying which ones. 61 In medieval works of art, the gesture of raising the hand was not used exclusively to express blessing but in several cases rather to indicate Christ's majesty and His being a sovereign of the world. 62 The hand raised in blessing is found in several images of Christ and God the Father. Still, the blessing right hand is also an important and necessary attribute of the iconographie type of the Salvator Mundi, irrespective of format. This motif was accompanied by that of the globe surmounted by a cross, providing additional meaning for the traditional type of the standing divine figure. Essentially a circle in three dimensions, the sphere was considered to be the ideal solid and had been seen as a symbol of perfection, totality, eternity, and harmony ever since antiquity. 63 It was to embody the well-ordered cosmos as opposed to chaos. The Greeks held that occupa, as the most perfect among all forms of being, is the form of 56 Tertullian,űe baptismo, VIII. The gesture of the imposition of hands bore several shades of meaning as early as the Early Christian period. Cf. L. de Bruyne, L'imposition des mains dans l'artchrétien ancien. Contribution iconologique à l'histoire du geste, Rivista Archeológia Cristiana 20 (1943), 113-266. 57 Kraus, op. cit. (cfr. n. 55), fig. 449. 58 Ibid., fig. 450. 59 Cf. Forster, D. OSB, Die Welt der Symbole, Innsbruck-Wien 1961, 24-5. 60 Quintilian refers to a version of the Greek greeting formula as "gestus maxime communis" (Institutiones 11,3,92): "Gestus ille maxime communis, quo medius digitus in pollicem contrahiturexplicitus tribus." J. Wilpert, Die römischen Mosaiken und Malereien der kirchlichen Bauten vom 4.-13. Jahrhundert 1., Freiburg i. B. 1916, 121. For an overview of the textual sources connected to divine figures raising their right hands in blessing, see Wilpert, op. cit., 121-3. Cf. Tikkanen, J. J., Der Psalterillustration im Mittelalter. Helsingfors 1895, 244-6. 61 De sacro altari, lib. II, 44. Cf. Kraus, op. cit. (cfr. n. 55), 752. 62 Cf. Th. Michels, Segensgestus oder Hoheitsgestus? Ein Beitrag zur christlichen Ikonographie, in: Festschrift für Alois Thomas, Trier 1967, 211-S3. 63 Cf. A. de Vries, Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery, Amsterdam-London 1974, 216.
