Who drew the first Halo around pictures of sains?
by 
Thomas VellaZarb
ANSWERS: 2
-
No one knows for sure, but the earliest known example is on a Greek fresco done around 950 that was found on the Isle of Xenos by Professor Harry A. Moody, a biologist who had been studying the blind fish found in caves there. His friend, Mary Webb, an anthropologist who was traveling with him, immeadiately understood that it was very old and and important. A few years later, in 1956, Ion Theodore, an expert at he Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY, identified the artist as Mantoudes, a Greek who had been banished to Xenos for his religious belief by the authorities in Athens.
-
Most of Christendom’s icons portray a circle of light around the heads of Jesus, Mary, angels, and “saints.” This is called a halo. Where did the halo originate? “Its origin was not Christian,” admits The Catholic Encyclopedia (1987 edition), “for it was used by pagan artists and sculptors to represent in symbol the great dignity and power of the various deities.” Furthermore, the book The Christians, by Bamber Gascoigne, contains a photograph obtained from the Capitoline Museum in Rome of a sun-god with halo. This god was worshiped by pagan Romans. Later, explains Gascoigne, “the sun’s halo” was “borrowed by Christianity.” Yes, the halo is connected with pagan sun worship.
RELATED QUESTIONS
Copyright 2023, Wired Ivy, LLC