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Sacred Paintings

  • Home
  • New Page
  • Writings on the Theology of Art by James Patrick Reid
    • Fitly Framed Together: Art, Sports, and the Building Up of the Body of Christ
    • Matisse and Russian Icons
    • A Few Words on Traditional and Modern Art in the Light of Metaphysics
    • The Art of the Beautiful Lecture Series in New York
    • The Metaphysics of Art (Article in "The Catholic Thing")
    • Invisible Things Clearly Seen
    • Art and the Transfiguration of the World
  • Paintings by James Patrick Reid
  • The Iconography of The Baptism of Christ
  • The iconography in the "Annunciation"
  • The iconography in "Nazareth"
  • Byzantine Icons by the hand of James Patrick Reid
  • About James Patrick Reid
  • Blog -- Meditations on Sacred Masterworks
  • Contact

Saint Hippolytus

August 13, 2016

There are two martyrs named Hippolytus, and the stories of their martyrdom tend to be conflated (as happens with the stories of some other namesake saints, such as Mary Magdalen and Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus). There is Hippolytus the theologian, one-time antipope, who was reconciled with Pope Pontian either before or after both were sentenced for their faith to lifetime forced labor in the Sardinian mines. And there is Hippolytus the soldier, who was converted by witnessing the steadfastness under torture of Saint Lawrence, and who afterwards was drawn and quartered for his faith. The name Hippolytus means "horses set loose." In Dieric Bouts' triptych (the left panel of which was painted by Hugo Van der Goes) the saint is stretched upon a hilside whose high curved outline against the sky suggests the curvature of the earth itself. The horses pull the saint's limbs in the four cardinal directions while the saint looks upward. Thus the world is crucified to him and he to the world, while his gaze is on God's "space" which, symbolized by the heavens, is of course everywhere, including the pain-wracked sinews of the saint's limbs, the earth (clay) of his human (Adamic) bodily being.

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