Start:Stop-Celebrating St Luke

Descent of the Holy Spirit, Roman Barbakh, 2017 (Icon Art)

An audio version of this week's reflection can be found here.

This week the church celebrated the Feast of Saint Luke. All we know about Luke comes from the bible; including Gospel attributed to him as well as the Acts of the Apostles, which most consider to have been written by the same author. 

Luke was a highly educated man, well versed in both the Hebrew Scriptures and Greco-Roman forms of literature as we can see from his sophisticated and creative writing. Together, the Gospel and Acts of the Apostles make up more than a quarter of the New Testament. Studies have demonstrated Luke’s wide ranging vocabulary - his gospel contains over 800 words not found elsewhere in the New Testament. 

This passage, unique to Luke’s Gospel, describes the beginning of the ministry of Jesus. It introduces many themes that are developed later including, perhaps, an indication of Jesus’ death.

Icons and the Russian Avant-Garde

The Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0,10 - Petrograd 1915-16

As part of “Islands of Saints,” a small exhibition of Icons of British and Anglo-Saxon saints at All Hallows by the Tower (12 July – 2 August 2019), art historian Andrew Spira gave a fascinating lecture on the influence of the orthodox Icon painting tradition on the Russian Avant-Garde (which reached its peak between the 1917 revolution and the early 1930s). He used images of work from a variety of little known (to me!) artists, to illustrate how icon painting influenced art and culture throughout the changing political landscape of Russia. He began by explaining what an icon is and how the icon painting tradition emerged.