page_title: God the Father in Western art
section_title: Middle ages to the Renaissance
hierarchical_section_title: God the Father in Western art / Middle ages to the Renaissance
context_page_description: 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.
  God the Father can be seen in some late Byzantine Cretan School icons, and ones from the borders of the Catholic and Orthodox worlds, under Western influence, but after the Russian Orthodox Church came down firmly against depicting him in 1667, he can hardly be seen in Russian art. Protestants generally disapprove of the depiction of God the Father, and originally did so strongly.
context_section_description: Prior to the 10th century no attempt was made to represent a separate depiction as a full human figure of God the Father in Western art. Yet, Western art eventually required some way to illustrate the presence of the Father, so through successive representations a set of artistic styles for the depiction of the Father in human form gradually emerged around the 10th century AD.
  It appears that when early artists designed to represent God the Father, fear and awe restrained them from a delineation of the whole person. Typically only a small part would be represented, usually the hand, or sometimes the face, but rarely the whole person.  In many images, the figure of the Son supplants the Father, so a smaller portion of the person of the Father is depicted.
  By the 12th century depictions of God the Father had started to appear in French illuminated manuscripts, which as a less public form could often be more adventurous in their iconography, and in stained glass church windows in England. Initially the head or bust was usually shown in some form of frame of clouds in the top of the picture space, where the Hand of God had formerly appeared; the Baptism of Christ on the famous baptismal font in Liège of Rainer of Huy is an example from 1118 (a Hand of God is used in another scene). Gradually the amount of the body shown can increase to a half-length figure, then a full-length, usually enthroned, as in Giotto's fresco of c. 1305 in Padua. In the 14th century the Naples Bible carried a depiction of God the Father in the Burning bush. By the early 15th century, the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry has a considerable number of images, including an elderly but tall and elegant full-length figure walking in the Garden of Eden (gallery), which show a considerable diversity of apparent ages and dress. The "Gates of Paradise" of the Florence Baptistry by Lorenzo Ghiberti, begun in 1425 show a similar tall full-length Father. The Rohan Book of Hours of about 1430 also included depictions of God the Father in half-length human form, which were now becoming standard, and the Hand of God becoming rarer. At the same period other works, like the large Genesis altarpiece by the Hamburg painter Meister Bertram, continued to use the old depiction of Christ as Logos in Genesis scenes. In the 15th century there was a brief fashion for depicting all three persons of the Trinity as similar or identical figures with the usual appearance of Christ.
  
  In an early Venetian school Coronation of the Virgin by Giovanni d'Alemagna and Antonio Vivarini, (c. 1443) (see gallery below) the Father is shown in the representation consistently used by other artists later, namely as a patriarch, with benign, yet powerful countenance and with long white hair and a beard, a depiction largely derived from, and justified by, the description of the Ancient of Days in the Old Testament, the nearest approach to a physical description of God in the Old Testament:
  . ...the Ancient of Days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. (Daniel 7:9) 
  In the Annunciation by Benvenuto di Giovanni in 1470, God the Father is portrayed in the red robe and a hat that resembles that of a Cardinal. However, even in the later part of the 15th century, the representation of the Father and the Holy Spirit as "hands and dove" continued, e.g. in Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ in 1472.
  In Renaissance paintings of the adoration of the Trinity, God may be depicted in two ways, either with emphasis on The Father, or the three elements of the Trinity. The most usual depiction of the Trinity in Renaissance art depicts God the Father as an old man, usually with a long beard and patriarchal in appearance, sometimes with a triangular halo (as a reference to the Trinity), or with a papal tiara, specially in Northern Renaissance painting. In these depictions The Father may hold a globe or book. He is behind and above Christ on the Cross in the Throne of Mercy iconography. A dove, the symbo
caption: Two "Hands of God" (relatively unusual) and the Holy Spirit as a dove in Baptism of Christ, by Verrocchio, 1472.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "2956", "Image ImageLength": "3484", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D5200", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC 2017 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2017:05:01 23:23:26", "Image Artist": "Paris Orlando", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ReferenceBlackWhite": "[0, 255, 0, 255, 0, 255]", "Image ExifOffset": "2482", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 3, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "5198", "Image XPAuthor": "Paris Orlando", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "5340", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7590", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/5", "EXIF FNumber": "7/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "160", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2015:12:06 16:28:10", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2015:12:06 16:28:10", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "290241/125000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "361471/100000", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "18/5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "18", "EXIF SubSecTime": "30", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "30", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "30", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2652", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3124", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[2, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "27", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Hard", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}