A INFÂNCIA DE JESUS NA ICONOGRAFIA ÍTALO-GERMÂNICA (SÉCULOS XII-XIV): ANÁLISE COMPARATIVA DE TRÊS VERSÕES APÓCRIFAS DOS EVANGELHOS

Abstract

Medieval christian iconography often illustrates themes about the life of Jesus that are not based exclusively on biblical texts; the gospels of the canon are insufficient to interpret them. This is the case of the representations of the “Apocryphal” narratives, the Christian writings excluded from the canon of the “Scriptures”, mainly because they were considered heretical. Despite being rejected by orthodoxy in the first centuries of the Church, in the Middle Ages they became an integral part of the culture, influencing in particular is art. An example is the narratives of the “gospels of Jesus' childhood”, apocryphal that sought to complement the biblical passages of the first years of Christ's life. In this work we intend to study comparatively three versions of the Italo-Germanic iconography, produced between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, which illustrate themes from the apocrypha of the childhood of Jesus. Among them, some were chosen for analysis: the miracle of the palm tree in the flight to Egypt, the miracle of the clay birds, and Jesus at school. With the perspective approach detected, I intend to highlight similarities and differences between the sources that emphasize their particular way of representing the narratives of the infancy gospels, and, in particular, the character of Jesus. Therefore, it is also intended a comparative examination of the images with the most influential apocrypha of childhood in the West, the "Gospel of Pseudo-Thomas" (2nd century), the "Arabic Gospel of Infancy" (6th century), and the "Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew” (7th century).