Original scientific paper
Reflections on the Tricephalos motif in St. Brice’s Church in Kalnik
Zdenko Balog
; Pučko otvoreno učilište Križevci, A. G. Matoša 4, HR-48260 Križevci
Abstract
The dogma of the Triune God is the basis not only of Cristian iconography, but also of Christian theology. A frequent stumbling block in the polemics between Christian denominations and other monotheistic religions on the polytheistic nature of Christianity, it consequently serves as Christian theologists’ bastion for the defense of Christianity. At the same time, Christian visual arts try to keep up with theology and in their way defend the same doctrine in painting and describe the indescribable: the dogma of the Triune God. In the last one and a half millennia the Triune God or the Holy Trinity has been portrayed in visual arts in very different ways and the iconography of this motif has been developing in line with Christian theology. Different portrayals where put to the fore, discredited and even forbidden, parallel with the development of theology and Christian iconography.
The portrayal of God as a person with three heads or one head with three faces, the so called Trichephalos, was popular for some time among many other iconographic methods of portrayal. This motif originates from the Middle Ages and almost completely disappeared from Western Christian iconography after the Council of Trent.
This paper examines the relatively close occurrence of the same iconographic motif, the Holy Trinity portrayed as one head with three faces, in the parish church in Kalnik and the cathedral (then a parish church) in Murska Sobota. Furthermore, this group of occurrences found in the Kalnik area and the northern part of Slovenia is further strengthened by some independent examples of the Tricephalos, which the author comments on. Before shedding some light on this local theme, it is important to state again that the Tricephalos is just one of the iconographic variants of the portrayal of the inconceivable dogma of the Triune God - the Holy Trinity.
Keywords
Reflections on the Tricephalos motif in St. Brice’s Church in Kalnik
Hrčak ID:
129912
URI
Publication date:
1.3.2014.
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