From Error to Truth

St. Thomas of Aquinas
Detail from The Demidoff Altarpiece, 1476
By Carlo Crivelli (1430-1494)
The National Gallery of Art, London

Laura Wood, from The Thinking Housewife, writes:

“The greatest kindness one can render to any man consists in leading him from error to truth.”
— St. Thomas Aquinas

Contemporary depictions of saints, and other biblical personalities, including Jesus, render them in soft light with benign faces. I think that couldn't be farther from the truth. The guidance from error to truth is a tall order, but also requires the greatest of humility. Those who undertake this, with the saints and Jesus as their guides, must realize the enormity of their task. Jesus knew this. And Saint Thomas of Aquinas shows this burden in his portrait above.

Below, on the left, is Diogo Morgado as the 21st century rendition of Jesus, from The History Channel series The Bible. Even if this Jesus were to get angry (in front of the temple, for example), or he suffers on the cross, he would end up looking like a Ken doll. (Would Mary then be a Barbie? I should work out this "artitist" project and make myself famous at the next Venice Biennial). A feature film is planned for February 2014, "inspired by the success of The Bible," as this site tells us. What epic can a Diogo Morgado, the actor slotted to play Jesus, inspire?

Ken Doll and G.Q. Jesus
The tattoo and the stigma are interchangeable.

Jesus from Cecil B. DeMille's 1927 The King of Kings
Played by H. B. Warner

Hollywood directors and actors of the 1920s and 1930s, and perhaps as late as the early 1960s, who produced the majority of Biblical films (worth watching), gave us the best filmic renditions of Jesus and other Old and New Testament forces. H. B. Warner played Jesus at age fifty-two. Granted that Jesus was a young man of thirty-three in the scriptures, but what contemporary actor that age can convince us of the path from error to truth? Perhaps the serious Leonardo DiCaprio might do so,


But not him, or him, or him, etc., etc.

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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