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For about a thousand years, in obedience to interpretations of specific Bible passages, pictorial depictions of God in Western Christianity had been avoided by Christian artists. At first only the Hand of God, often emerging from a cloud, was portrayed. Gradually, portrayals of the head and later the whole figure were depicted, and by the time of the Renaissance artistic representations of God the Father were freely used in the Western Church.〔George Ferguson, 1996 ''Signs & symbols in Christian art'' ISBN 0-19-501432-4 page 92〕 ==Background and early history== Early Christians believed that the words of Book of Exodus 33:20 "Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see Me and live" and of the Gospel of John 1:18: "No man hath seen God at any time" were meant to apply not only to the Father, but to all attempts at the depiction of the Father.〔James Cornwell, 2009 ''Saints, Signs, and Symbols: The Symbolic Language of Christian Art'' ISBN 0-8192-2345-X page 2〕 The Hand of God is found several times in the only ancient synagogue with a large surviving decorative scheme, the Dura Europos Synagogue of the mid-3rd century, and was probably adopted into Early Christian art from Jewish art. It was common in Late Antique art in both East and West, and remained the main way of depicting the actions or approval of God the Father in the West until about the end of the Romanesque period. Historically considered, God the Father is more frequently manifested in the Old Testament, while the Son is manifested in the New Testament. Hence it might be said that the Old Testament refers more especially to the history of the Father and the New Testament to that of the Son. Yet, in early depictions of scenes from the Old Testament, artists used the conventional depiction of Jesus to represent the Father,〔Adolphe Napoléon Didron, 2003 ''Christian iconography: or The history of Christian art in the middle ages, Volume 1'' ISBN 0-7661-4075-X pages 167〕 especially in depictions of the story of Adam and Eve, the most frequently depicted Old Testament narrative shown in Early Medieval art, and one that was felt to require the depiction of a figure of God "walking in the garden" (Genesis 3:8). The account in Genesis naturally credits the Creation to the single figure of God, in Christian terms, God the Father. However the first person plural in Genesis 1:26 "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness", and New Testament references to Christ as Creator (John 1:3, Colossians 1:15) led Early Christian writers to associate the Creation with the Logos, or pre-existing Christ, God the Son. From the 4th century the church was also keen to affirm the doctrine of consubstantiality confirmed in the Nicene Creed of 325. It was therefore usual to have depictions of Jesus as Logos taking the place of the Father and creating the world alone, or commanding Noah to construct the ark or speaking to Moses from the Burning bush.〔Adolphe Napoléon Didron, 2003 ''Christian iconography: or The history of Christian art in the middle ages, Volume 1'' ISBN 0-7661-4075-X pages 167-170〕 There was also a brief period in the 4th century when the Trinity were depicted as three near-identical figures, mostly in depicting scenes from Genesis; the Dogmatic Sarcophagus in the Vatican is the best known example. In isolated cases this iconography is found throughout the Middle Ages, and revived somewhat from the 15th century, though it attracted increasing disapproval from church authorities. A variant is Enguerrand Quarton's contract for the Coronation of the Virgin requiring him to represent the Father and Son of the Holy Trinity as identical figures.〔Dominique Thiébaut: "Enguerrand Quarton", Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press, 2007, ()〕 One scholar has suggested that the enthroned figure in the centre of the apse mosaic of Santa Pudenziana in Rome of 390-420, normally regarded as Christ, in fact represents God the Father.〔Suggestion by F.W. Sclatter, see review by W. Eugene Kleinbauer of ''The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art'', by Thomas F. Mathews, ''Speculum'', Vol. 70, No. 4 (Oct., 1995), pp. 937-941, Medieval Academy of America, (JSTOR )〕 In situations, such as the Baptism of Christ, where a specific representation of God the Father was indicated, the Hand of God was used, with increasing freedom from the Carolingian period until the end of the Romanesque. This motif now, since the discovery of the 3rd century Dura Europos synagogue, seems to have been borrowed from Jewish art, and is found in Christian art almost from its beginnings. The use of religious images in general continued to increase up to the end of the 7th century, to the point that in 695, upon assuming the throne, Byzantine emperor Justinian II put an image of Christ on the obverse side of his gold coins, resulting in a rift which ended the use of Byzantine coin types in the Islamic world.〔Robin Cormack, 1985 ''Writing in Gold, Byzantine Society and its Icons'', ISBN 0-540-01085-5〕 However, the increase in religious imagery did not include depictions of God the Father. For instance, while the eighty second canon of the Council of Trullo in 692 did not specifically condemn images of The Father, it suggested that icons of Christ were preferred over Old Testament shadows and figures.〔Steven Bigham, 1995 ''Image of God the Father in Orthodox Theology and Iconography'' ISBN 1-879038-15-3 page 27〕 The beginning of the 8th century witnessed the suppression and destruction of religious icons as the period of Byzantine iconoclasm (literally ''image-breaking'') started. Emperor Leo III (717–741), suppressed the use of icons by imperial edict of the Byzantine Empire, presumably due to a military loss which he attributed to the undue veneration of icons.〔According to accounts by Patriarch Nikephoros and the chronicler Theophanes〕 The edict (which was issued without consulting the Church) forbade the veneration of religious images but did not apply to other forms of art, including the image of the emperor, or religious symbols such as the cross.〔Warren Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State and Society, Stanford University Press, 1997〕 Theological arguments against icons then began to appear with iconoclasts arguing that icons could not represent both the divine and the human natures of Jesus at the same time. In this atmosphere, no public depictions of God the Father were even attempted and such depictions only began to appear two centuries later. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「God the Father in Western art」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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