Analysis Of St. John The Feast Of Herod

The Early Renaissance began in the 15th century and it began in Italy. The Renaissance was “a period of great creative and intellectual activity, during which artists broke away from the restrictions of Byzantine Art.” During the Early Renaissance, there was an increase in popularity of narrative images that portrayed stories from the bible. The flourishment of these narrative images can be due to the humanizing of Christ in order to invoke more religious involvement. As pictorial narratives became increasingly popular, some people believed that these narratives functioned as teaching materials for people who were illiterate. They believed that the biblical images were simply representations of stories in the bible and were produced to educate …show more content…
In, Beheading of St. John the Baptist and the Feast of Herod, the scene at the left depicts the beheading of St. John, the middle depicts the dancing of Salome, and the right depicts the placing of St. John’s head on a platter. While the image uses a continuous narrative, the scenes cannot be easily traced in a chronological and ordered way. People who do not know the story will not be able to connect the scenes. They will only be able to get a general idea. In comparison, The Meeting of St. Anthony and St. Paul, has a clear chronological order. The scenes follow one another from top to bottom across the foreground. While viewers can understand the progression of the events, the problem of understanding the story and the context persist. One cannot simply look at the painting and understand the biblical story of Saint Anthony’s journey. In the second scene one can see the image of a centaur but one will not understand the role the centaur plays. Questions about who and why are present so although some biblical pictorial narratives can be represented in an ordered way, the problem of understanding the context still remains. Images are not simply a visual transcription of texts as it requires knowledge of the biblical …show more content…
For example, the characters in The Feast of Herod and the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist by Benozzo Gozzoli, wore Medieval European clothes. There was not an embellishment to depict the king as a Byzantine King. The date and setting of the time also plays a role in the clothing choices. Artists may present characters of pictorial narratives in many different ways. The characters could be dressed in accordance to the period it was produced or the characters could even be dressed in an entirely different culture. Artists have many options in how to dress their characters and they are not always similar as to how biblical stories may depict them. The Beheading of St. John the Baptist and the Feast of Herod and The Feast of Herod and the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist are pictorial narratives that are both based on the same biblical story. Although they are both based on the same stories, differences can be seen in the clothes and artistic styles. The clothes in Benozzo Gozzoli’s work resembles Medieval European clothes while the clothes in Fra Filippo’s work resembles Byzantine clothes. One can notice from this there are many underlying changes that show how biblical narratives astray from the biblical