Week 4 - Hildegard Von Bingem and Myticism

Hildegard of Bingen’s medieval image, The Fall is iconographically identified as of the Byzantine style. Here we can see symbolism of flatness and a lack of spatial unity or tonality considered at the time to be sufficient for the representation through iconography.

 

The image is rather surprising in its imagery, straying away from type-cast Christian forms, uninhibited by such constraints developed during the Renaissance. Once Rome had converted to the Christian religion and the move from Pagan to Christian imagery was evident and Ancient Greece offered the notion of fictional forms through imagination in order to represent the body that were not primarily concerned with beauty. Adam embodies a quality of beauty; his pale white colour compliments the Christian association with purity. As he sleeps he is unaware of such new advances and the sole element of sin is given to her. Capturing the vision is the stars of gold creating an ambiguous representation of she who tempted him, originally invested with good intentions before her corruption.

 

As Adam figure sleeps to the tree and a wing shaped cloud disperses from his side towards the serpent in the tree. Represented by the cloud’s stars opposed to a human form is Eve who is fashioned from Adam’s ribs whilst he sleeps, it is indicative here that humans are created to be bright and beautiful in order to replace fallen angels. Her multitude represents Eve and her descendants, imaging her to be the necessary mediator of time, as people need to reproduce – we are not gods, but created by God. She acts as the transfer of humanity beyond the Garden of Eden.

The dark and ominous black tree of the image morphs its branches into that of a serpent, its black venom infecting her and the fall from Eden becomes evident through the image’s formlessness and the infiltration of Eden into Hell through the fiery mouth of the tree.

 

The standard Canon of Christianity is often told in an implicitly misogynistic tone. As the unseen creation of God from Adam, she in turn creates the patriarchal structures of the world due to being held responsible for the fall of humankind into sin.  She may only be redeemed by the Virgin Mary who in turn becomes the new eve bearing the child of God. However, Hildegard’s image suggests that Eve is responsible for humanity’s development and growth. Her sin is interpreted as curiosity compelling her to learn about her world and the things in it; here we find not the notion of the damnation of mankind due to the female but an effigy of God’s gift of free, and the psychological and physical changes we experience as we move into adulthood.

 

The piece was created by the Byzantine mystic named Hildegard op Bingen as part of her book of Scivias. Despite Catholicism’s categorical rejection of women’s role in the church, she was the first to be allowed to preach. Writing of female sexuality, health and morality she stayed within a convent for the majority of her life apparently receiving direct encounters from God. Despite her gender, eight volume of her work was received and accepted by the church. Having been educated by the anchorite Jutta from the age of eight, Hildegard trained as a mystic, forming as a threat to ecclesiastic Patriarchal system due to here direct encounters with the divine.

 

The image, like the rest of her work, is completely unique to her time, as Byzantium representations often utilized the generic human figure in which to represent women and men. Yet, instead of viewing it as a primitive and undeveloped era of creativity and development, ‘The Fall’ demonstrates the sophistication of the Byzantine age through its use of iconography inspired by the unseen godliness of the divine.  Through her visionary works of imagination Hildegard, provides a alternative teaching of Christianity in the representation of alleged universal concepts creating a diversity in form concerning gender and the structure of hierarchies within religious institutions.