Description

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An expert shows how Jesus is revealed in great paintings, in ways more subtle than words.

Kiely walks through important scenes of the Gospels, pausing with great painters to consider Jesus, how he looks, how he stands or sits, how he interacts with other figures and the viewer, how his actions and teachings are interpreted and translated by artists more concerned with design than analysis, more in forms than words. Painters and their paintings are the guides—beguiling, challenging, consoling, instructive—displaying colors, skill, and perspective while beckoning the viewer back to scripture and to the Jesus “who accepted to be seen.”
 

About the Author

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Robert J. Kiely is the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English, Emeritus at Harvard University–where he still teaches each year, including the popular freshman seminar, “Beauty in Christianity.” His earlier book Blessed and Beautiful (Yale University Press, 2010) offered a meditation on the lives of saints and the images of them painted by some of these same painters.

Praise For…

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“Beautifully written and wonderfully illustrated, this book brings new insights into all that has gone into portrayals of Jesus.” —Sissela Bok, author of Exploring Happiness: From Aristotle to Brain Science

“Kiely's beautifully written and illustrated book is an extended meditation, a visio divina focused upon classic Italian paintings and their scriptural sources. It's a book born of love—of the art and its Gospel context—but, above all, of the person who illuminates every page.” —Paul J. Contino, Pepperdine University

“This book is filled with the energy and grace of its subject. Its pages are an immense gallery in which we contemplate artistic depictions of the life, teaching, passion, and resurrection of Jesus.” —Barbara Gelpi, Professor of English Emeritus at Stanford