Christ Child  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

(Redirected from Baby Jesus)
Jump to: navigation, search

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

The Child Jesus (also called Divine Infant, Baby Jesus, or Christ Child) represents Jesus from his birth to the age of twelve. At thirteen he was considered to have become adult, in accordance with both the Jewish custom of his own time, and that of most Christian cultures until recent centuries. The Child Jesus has been very frequently depicted in art, from around the third or fourth century onwards, in icons and paintings, sculpture, and all the media available. The most common depictions are of Nativity scenes showing the birth of Jesus, with his mother, Mary, and his legal father Joseph, and depictions of him as a baby with his mother, known as Madonna and Child, of which there are a number of iconographical types in both Eastern and Western traditions. Other scenes from his time as a baby, of his circumcision, Presentation at the temple, the Adoration of the Three Magi, and the Flight to Egypt, are common. Scenes showing his developing years are relatively rare, as these are hardly mentioned in the Gospels. A number of apocryphal texts, the Infancy Gospels grew up with legendary accounts of the intervening period, and these are sometimes shown.

Depictions in art

From about the third or fourth century onwards, the child Jesus is frequently shown in paintings, and sculpture. Commonly these are nativity scenes showing the birth of Jesus, with his mother Mary, and her husband Joseph.

Depictions as a baby with the Virgin Mary, known as Madonna and Child, are iconographical types in Eastern and Western traditions. Other scenes from his time as a baby, of his circumcision, presentation at the temple, the adoration of the Magi, and the flight into Egypt, are common. Scenes showing his developing years are more rare but not unknown.

Saint Joseph, Anthony of Padua, and Saint Christopher are often depicted holding the Christ Child. The Christian mystics Saint Teresa of Ávila, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, along with the devotees of Divino Niño such as Mother Angelica and Father Giovanni Rizzo claim to have had apparitions of Jesus as a toddler.

During the Middle Ages

The Christ Child was a popular subject in European wood sculpture beginning in the 1300s.

The popularity of the Christ child was well known in Spain under the title montañesino after the santero sculptor Juan Martínez Montañés who began the trend. These icons of the Christ Child was often posed in the contrapposto style in which the positioning of the knees reflected in the opposite direction, similar to ancient depictions of the Roman Emperor.

The images were quite popular among nobility of Spain and Portugal. Colonial images of the Christ child also began to wear vestments, a pious practice developed by the santero culture in later colonial years, carrying the depiction of holding the globus cruciger, a bird symbolizing a soul or the Holy Spirit or various paraphernalia related to its locality or region.

The symbolism of the Child Jesus in art reached its apex during the Renaissance: the Holy Family was a central theme in the works of Leonardo da Vinci and many other masters.

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Christ Child" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools