“He has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness.” Job 26:10 As we’ve discussed in a previous post, a circle is the Christian symbol for God. This is because a circle has no beginning and no end. This association seems to […]
Martin Luther definitely made an impact on Christianity. He’s known for: Being a brilliant theologian Being a key figure in the Protestant Reformation Translating the Bible from Latin into the common tongue (for him, German) Being a bit of a hot head Using colorful language Writing wonderful hymns Above we […]
In Christianity, a circle symbolizes God, because it has no beginning and no end. In older paintings which depict Christ, its’ common to see a circle of light behind Jesus’ head, to highlight his divinity. The word mandala is the Sanskrit word for circle or disk. The Christian Mandala™ […]
We finally arrive at Hildegard von Bingen (mentioned her in a few posts)! She was an utterly brilliant, influential Christian woman. Constructing mandalas in the 12th century, she’s the earliest Christian Mandala creator I know of. Hildegard was a German Benedictine Abbess. Like Herrad von Landsberg, Hildegard was a female superior […]
Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter from the early Renaissance. He was a true master. Botticelli’s best known works are The Birth of Venus and Primavera. In both masterpieces the lighting is ambient (coming from all directions). Shadows, for the most part, are absent. This gives the sense that […]
Hieronymous Bosch is a fascinating creator of Christian Mandalas. He was a Dutch painter born around 1450, and died in 1516. Only one year before Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses. Not a lot is known about Bosch, from a biographical standpoint. We do know that he was a […]
Jakob Böhme was a Lutheran, born about a century after Martin Luther himself. While Böhme worked as a shoemaker, he also expressed his Christian faith using mandalas. He’s a strange, but interesting dude. Böhme had divine visions, as did Hildegard von Bingen (still not saying where she is on the […]
Herrad of Landsberg was an amazing woman from the 12th century. She was a very well-educated abbess, and her community resided at the Hohenburg Abbey in Eastern France. She’s allegedly the first woman to write an encyclopedia. Herrad was born about 30 years after Hildegard of Bingen, another […]
One of my favorite artists, M.C. Escher is a Dutch artist and print maker. He created motifs which, when repeated, fill the printed page. Escher also created roughly two dozen prints with Biblical themes. One finds him returning to specific Biblical themes over the course of his life, rendering […]
The Hour of Monarchy was painted by Salvador Dalí, and is currently located in Barcelona, Spain, in the Palacio Albeniz. Dalí was one of the best known painters of the Surrealist movement, and became a Christian later in life. Looking back on Dalí’s paintings, and antics, before 1949, they illustrate […]
