Practice question · Put in order
Arrange the steps of identifying a Christian subject, in order.
- If it is absent, search the Apocrypha, the Golden Legend and devotional writing
- Ask whether the arrangement makes a typological argument
- Identify any attributes present
- Describe the figures, objects and setting
- Search the canonical text for the episode
Hints
- The canonical text is searched before the other sources.
- The typological question comes once the scenes are identified.
Show the answer
- Describe the figures, objects and setting
- Identify any attributes present
- Search the canonical text for the episode
- If it is absent, search the Apocrypha, the Golden Legend and devotional writing
- Ask whether the arrangement makes a typological argument
Why
The fourth step is the one beginners omit, and it is where a large proportion of European imagery actually lives. Finding no biblical warrant for a detail is the beginning of the enquiry, not the end, and the Golden Legend answers most of what remains.
Practise Judeo-Christian Sources I: Scripture and Typology
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Art History I is free to start.
More questions on Judeo-Christian Sources I: Scripture and Typology
- A stained-glass window shows the Crucifixion flanked by the sacrifice of Isaac and the brazen serpent. Why is…
- Sort each element of Christian imagery by whether its source is CANONICAL scripture or something else.
- The Golden Legend was compiled without much critical scepticism about the legends it collected.
- Which are sources for European Christian imagery beyond the canonical Bible?
- Around what year was the Golden Legend compiled?
- Complete the account of typology.
- Typology is an interpretive framework rather than historical chronology. What follows from this distinction…
- The ox and the ass at the Nativity appear in the Gospel of Luke.