WHAT IS ART HISTORY?

St. Gregory of Nyssa reminds us of the importance of art in teaching history. Art has the power to communicate what simple words cannot. Remembering a painting of Isaac being sacrificed by his father Abraham, St. Gregory says,

“I often saw the painting [of Abraham sacrificing Isaac] upon which I could not look without tears; so lively did Art put history before my eyes.”

At the center of all of human history is Jesus Christ. Around him, our knowledge of history grows and is purified. As Catholic Christians, we don’t look at history as the study of the multitude of facts and figures making up human existence as the secularists do. If we studied history this way, no amount of books could contain all the facts of human existence. Think about it. If you were to sit down and write all that you did today from the time you awoke – every thought you had, every movement you made, including involuntary movements of your heart beat, etc – marking down each place you went, each activity you performed – you could fill an entire book with just one day! This is not history. Yet, secularists tend to write history in this manner. That is why modern history books are full of so many seemingly meaningless facts about civilizations, peoples, events – its just too much to read or write – and it is not true history.

Catholics and classical historians view things differently. They view history as having meaning and purpose. They understand that there is a unity to history. It is not a compiling of countless unrelated events – rather, all the events of human history can be “linked” in some way to central figures and central historical ideas. For Catholics, that figure and that idea is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our history is not just our own – it is the story of God interacting with us and showing us the path of holiness and eternal life. This story, or history, takes place over hundreds and hundreds of years, as God’s plan unfolds for us. We call this unfolding plan Salvation History. Because we believe in Salvation History, we don’t have the need to simply write down each and every aspect of human events, but only that which aids in our understanding of what God is doing in our world. All events are related, in some sense, to the central event of Christ, but they vary in their degree of importance.

ART HISTORY

Knowing all this, our study of the fine arts (painting, drawing, sculpting, etc) is not simply an Art History. We have established that there is really only one history – Salvation History. What we intend to do, then, with this course, is to understand how art has both contributed to our understanding of Salvation History and has been affected by it. Thus, we will not waste our time studying the countless artifacts and artistic endeavors of each of the hundreds of civilizations that have existed on earth. This would not be helpful. We can already assume that man, at every point in history, is artistic. Instead of exploring every artifact from every culture’s art, we will study art from the perspective of Salvation History and see how man has contributed to furthering what God is doing in history through the use of his creative powers. Thus, our study of “Art in Salvation History” will have meaning and purpose. In many ways, this course will supplement your child's Chronology courses because it will aid in his understanding of history with the medium of art.