Wonderment
Wonderment
Arthur Aghajanian
On Cycles of Spiritual Maturity and the Paintings of Titian & Velázquez
“Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.” — Ephesians 4:14-15
The Garden
There’s something about looking at pictures of yourself as a kid. I think of my official school portraits as emblems commemorating different phases of my childhood. The earliest ones are consigned to yellowing pages in battered family albums, stacked deep on closet shelves. On occasion, sparked by an event or sudden memory, I’ll dig up these pictures and reminisce. They’re an inextricable part of my personal history, mixed into memories and showing me past selves simultaneously familiar and strange.
Each image is like an icon that demarcates a corresponding year of childhood. Going back through time with these old portraits is like unpacking Russian nesting dolls. One former self fitting neatly into the next. I didn’t manage to save all of them, but they were taken every year from kindergarten through high school. Today I have enough to make up a fragmented timeline showing how I grew and changed. Comparing them to one another and to how I look now is like a game. One that teases me with the possibility of knowing myself better, as if looking at them long enough will reveal new insights into who I’ve become.
Picture day at school demanded we dress and look our best to approximate some parental ideal. Of the earliest portraits I still have, the one from kindergarten is the most touching. Though I look like a cherub with my scraggly auburn hair and delicate head, something’s off about this portrait. Face flushed, my small mouth appears to be open in protest. I can still recall why. It’s that white sweater, ringed with green and red patterns that I was forced to wear that day. It was so coarse I can still feel its threads prickling around my neck. I have a pleading look, and the welled-up tears are visible in my eyes—almond-shaped and glistening. On picture day our early and mutable sense of self surrenders to the adult need for a fixed identity.
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Titian’s Ranuccio Farnese
Prior to the Renaissance, Western portraits of children other than the Christ Child were uncommon. A child was an “incomplete” adult, and it wasn’t until the modern concept of the child developed in the seventeenth century that images of kids would present childhood as a distinct phase of life. But the rise of humanism in Renaissance Italy meant that some artists were already making images of children that provided glimpses into their subject’s inner world. The Venetian artist Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian (ca. 1485/90-1576), claimed himself to be the first great portraitist of children. His painting of Ranuccio Farnese, grandson of Pope Paul II, still retains a powerful hold on me, decades after I first encountered it at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., not far from where I spent my own childhood.
Ranuccio had been sent to Venice by the Pope to head a property belonging to the Knights of Malta. Hoping to win the patronage of the powerful Farnese family, from 1541-1542, Titian put the full weight of his skills into painting the boy, who was only eleven when the portrait was started.
Titian has painted the boy with all the trappings of authority. Ranuccio’s voluminous cloak of office weighs heavily on his slender frame. Far too large, it conveys the significant responsibilities placed on the child, enclosing him even as it threatens to slide off his shoulders. It features the Maltese Cross, glinting with soft light, while the boy’s torso is bound by a rose-colored doublet, delicately patterned and luminescent. Ranuccio looks to his right, and the slight turn of his body suggests he’s about to move. This contributes to the aliveness of the portrait, and we empathize with a child who’s been thrown into the role of a man. The innocence of the boy’s face, which bears a shy glance, contrasts with his prestigious rank. It’s remarkable how assured he appears, despite his tender age. The state of presence Titian managed to convey in his painting and our knowledge that Ranuccio died at only thirty-five years of age adds further poignancy to this great work.
Titian, a giant of the Renaissance, was renowned for the brilliant technique and probing depth of his portraits. We see something of both the artist and ourselves in his subjects. And I see my boyhood self in the young Ranuccio, just as familiar and alien as those old school portraits of mine. During his brief life, Ranuccio would enjoy an outstanding career as a bishop, archbishop, and cardinal. The portrait hints at his future success, and it’s through the institution of the church that I see the two of us linked. In the painting youth and religious tradition are fused as the child becomes the embodiment of the church’s authority. The rich garments that envelop him carry not just physical heft but the symbolic weight of ecclesiastical tradition. Yet I think about how the church provided us both a foundation and order growing up. It’s notable that despite the burden of his vestments, he is graceful and poised. In fact, part of the portrait’s charm lies in the confidence he exudes. He’s not just a cog in the dynastic machine, he’s a real person living in an established order that both protects and contains him.
In its formality, the painting reminds us of the larger order we’re all born into, with its rules and boundaries. But such things are necessary for healthy growth, providing the security we need to find our place in the world, and equipping us to manage life’s contradictions as we age. The guidance organized religion provides for our early spiritual formation comes in its own formal packaging but allows access to riches we can draw from as we grow into them.
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In the early part of our journey, we lean on the church’s authority. With our feet rooted firmly in belief, we must develop a healthy ego and sense of belonging. On a simple level, Ranuccio’s portrait is a testament to the church’s wealth and influence. But considering he’s a child, and like the school portrait his image is framed by an institution charged with shaping him, religious education comes to mind. At the beginning of our spiritual formation, if our relationship to the church is healthy, its influence may cover us in layers, like the boy’s finery. It provides the belief system and community of like-minded people that support us. Its laws are beneficial for orienting us. Children thrive knowing they are loved by God, and the Bible’s stories help them make sense of the world. In fact, our spiritual growth depends on this groundwork. Ranuccio seems to thrive in the ecclesiastical order, embracing the role he’s been thrust into. And however we might judge the system of privilege that’s on display, the wonder of boyhood seems to eclipse it. The subject’s rendered with a warmth that transcends any role or title.
Yet if we want to grow, we can’t remain here. If we insist on protecting our beliefs by making our container a leaden shell, we won’t mature spiritually. The time comes when the unfamiliar must be embraced as an opportunity to develop as we were meant to. When we’re challenged to move beyond the limitations of the beliefs we were first taught, courage is what’s needed. We have to test what we’ve been taught against experience. Pushed to evolve when the old answers no longer make sense, some will resist, and some will embrace the invitation to “show up” for transformation. In Romans 7, Paul tells us that it’s impossible to be sanctified by keeping the law; that in Christ we’ve been released from its bondage to serve God in a new Spirit. Although religious indoctrination teaches rules that help establish us, we can’t live permanently bound by them. We’re called to a journey, and I think it’s grace that draws us forward. Otherwise, we dig in our feet and refuse to move, insisting that what we learned as children is the only truth. It’s reassuring and giving it up threatens our identity as Christians. But of course, that’s what Jesus asks us to do: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). Our religious upbringing can only take us so far. As we become more aware of and in tune with our greater consciousness in God, we can “no longer be infants” in our faith.
The Fall
The transformation from an innocent child to a fully realized adult follows a pattern. It begins when the comfort of our beliefs is challenged or when we find the old answers no longer satisfy us. When our back is against the wall, and we’re forced to adapt or stagnate. The belief system that used to support us can’t account for or explain everything, and eventually it fails to provide us with the certainty we crave. The disorientation that ensues is necessary for moving on to spiritual maturity. True seekers must eventually step out of their support vessel and navigate the unknown waters of life on their own.
Joseph Campbell’s monomyth charts self-development in what he called the Hero’s Journey. It’s like the spiritual path. It begins with the child’s birth into a set of laws and beliefs, which must be left behind to embark on life’s journey. This “initiation” stage can happen to people at different times in their lives. The hero must depart from the world he knows, leaving behind comfort and security. Sometimes he’s reluctant, and like him, we too may choose to ignore the call. Or we may not at first be ready. If we make the break, like the hero we’ll face many obstacles and conflicts on our quest to self-discovery.
Having endured hardships and suffering, the hero longs for home, but first he’ll need to overcome his own hubris and ask for help. On the spiritual path, we learn to expand ourselves beyond ego, and like the hero’s eventual return, ours is marked by an inner transformation. Peace arises through humility and acceptance. The journey we have undergone has matured us and at last we come home to rest in our true self.
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Diego Velázquez’s Mars
In the Greek classic The Odyssey, the Hero’s Journey and the spiritual quest it exemplifies is elaborated in a mythical world. Myth also happens to be the point of reference for a painting that, when seen from the perspective of spiritual development, could be a pendant to Titian’s portrait. Mars (ca. 1638), a work by the great Spanish painter Diego Velázquez, seems to acknowledge the spiritual dimension that often underlies mythic narratives. It’s a portrait of another mythical figure who, like Odysseus, excels in battle, but after much hardship has found his way home. In this phase of life, he’s surrendered his ultra-masculine shell, laying down his arms in surrender.
In what was for its time an astonishing treatment of the male form, Velázquez, an artist greatly influenced by Titian, has painted the Roman god stripped and vulnerable after being revealed in his shame. Referencing the iconography of Mars’ disarmament by Venus, here we find an unidealized, awkward man alone, lazily seated at the edge of an unmade bed. It seems absurd at first. Is this the god of War or a masquerade proffered by some middle-aged court jester employed by the same king the artist served? The man stares out at us, his eyes shadowed by a large helmet—the only thing he wears. He has a bemused expression and seems to have hurriedly thrown on the bedclothes that cover his lap and cascade to the floor. In his right hand he holds a staff. His armor lays in a pile at his feet, looking like mere props. His legs are splayed, and he sits slumped. His left elbow is on his knee, and his chin rests on a curled hand in the traditional gesture of melancholy.
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In Spirituality of the Psalms, the scholar and theologian Walter Brueggemann writes about the rhythm of life and suggests that we regularly find ourselves in one of three states: orientation, disorientation, and new orientation. It’s also the larger pattern of life. Orientation is distinguished by stability. Our ego develops within the boundaries of family, law, and tradition. Disorientation is the phase of lament. We feel like God is absent and life’s filled with confusion, disappointment, and sorrow. In new orientation, we’ve found salvation in knowing and surrendering to God’s presence in the midst of our lives. The hero experiences disorientation on his epic journey, but when he arrives home, he’s transformed. This is resurrection, and the affinities that Velázquez’s Mars shares with the figure of Christ connect the mythical archetype with spiritual awakening and the new orientation stage.
Homecoming
Velázquez’s treatment of his mythological subject is steeped in paradox. Rather than depicting the god as a fierce, intimidating military figure as was customary, the artist has made him vulnerable. Similar to images of the Crucifixion, in which the human suffering of Christ is depicted through the mortality of flesh, Velázquez’s Mars has been degraded—however, unlike Christ, it is due to his own sin. He’s a divine being in a body that’s all too human, one that seems in need of being propped up. Its torpor echoed in the helmet strap that lays limply alongside a fleshy neck and across a protruding collar bone. Two prominent creases of flesh across the belly and a bulging calf muscle magnify the unyielding naturalism. They contrast in their harsh contours with the left hand, a loosely painted claw. His outsized mustache adds a comic tone. Overall, Velázquez has painted the figure with an active brush, so that it seems hazy, dissipated, and somewhat blurred around the edges.
We’ve encountered Mars in a moment of reflection, following the humiliation he experienced at the hands of Vulcan, god of the forge. In the Roman author Ovid’s narrative poem Metamorphoses, Mars was having an affair with Vulcan’s wife Venus. Alerted to what was happening by Apollo, Vulcan caught the lovers in a net made of bronze so fine it couldn’t be detected. Helpless to escape, Mars was publicly exposed in front of other gods who laughed in delight at the humiliating spectacle.
Velázquez’s alternately tragic and comic figure is visually analogous to Christ, who was treated as a fool and humiliated on the cross. Holy fools were men who would imitate Christ by disrupting social norms. Such behavior was often theatrical in nature and meant to declare the primacy of God’s laws over those of society. Here, the man set up to represent Mars relates to Christ in the way his awkward embodiment recalls various “fools for Christ” throughout the church’s history.
Velázquez makes Mars a signifier of human vulnerability in a condition we can empathize with. His body resembles a suffering Christ when considered in the light of Spanish art during the Counter-Reformation, the context in which Velázquez made his work. During this period, the church promoted art that encouraged devotion to Christ through naturalism and emotional impact. In its reference to the suffering Christ, the picture directs us through the vulnerability of a Roman god to the humanity of our God. In this image, Mars in his woundedness and disorientation, like Christ, transcends identity. As a soldier, Mars has returned not just home, but to the boudoir, and his heroic masculinity is dispensed with through a new orientation. Wrapped in luxurious sheets, he passively offers us his staff, while his open lap references images of the female nude. War has been surrendered for love, in which ego dissolves.
It’s the same for us. When we surrender our ego—the small, human-made self, we are reborn. We’re whole and able to embrace the contradictions of life. In our new orientation, we transcend the subject-object split of dualism and experience wonder again. But this is not the naive wonder of a child. In Luke 18:17, when Jesus proclaims, “Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it”, he’s speaking of faith. When we finally realize we’re not in control, when our plans for life are disrupted or the limits reached, the embrace of “what is” leads the way to spiritual conversion, or metanoia. Then, when we’ve experienced the spacious awareness of God, we know what it means to be “home”.
The orientation cycle Brueggemann describes is continuous and ongoing. Even those who are spiritually mature move back to the naive stage of childhood sometimes. And disorientation accompanies any leap in consciousness. But as we rest longer in our new orientation, our relationship to our religious tradition changes. When we revisit scripture, and draw from the well of Christian history, our understanding is deeper and our ability to apply its teachings greater. Like contemplating old school pictures from a new vantage point, the familiar opens out into a mystery that keeps giving.
Arthur Aghajanian
Writer & Educator
Arthur is a Christian contemplative, essayist, and educator. His work explores visual culture through a spiritual lens. His essays have appeared in a variety of publications, including Radix, Saint Austin Review, The Curator, and many others. He holds an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design. Visit him at imageandfaith.com
Photography by Stan Krotov