Iconography of the Transfiguration

Seven Armenian illustrated manuscripts from the tenth-fourteenth centuries
demonstrate an unusual scheme of the Transfiguration, where the prophet
Moses is depicted in a shroud. Three of these illustrations (M 10780, M 6201
and the Gospel of Tsghrut’i village near Akhalktsikhe) are relatively publicised
in the scholarly milieu, while the others are less known (M 4814, M 4806, M
4818) or have not been explored so far (LOB Or. 2680). Although several brief
comments have been made by researchers on the subject, they do not give
a complete overview of the sources of this iconographic variation. In addition
to the illustrations of the Transfiguration, the same iconography of Moses is
maintained in the Second Coming of Christ (M 4818), which is referenced for
the first time in this article. The present paper stresses on the literal source and
the provenance of the pictorial model. The amount of the extant illustrations
discussed in this paper implies that we are not dealing with an exceptional, but
rather with a parallel tradition of visualising the Theophanies. Therefore, this
contribution may be of interest to medievalists looking for the covert imagery
and the text-image relationship in the Eastern Christianity.

The Church of the Transfiguration located in the very heart of Warsaw was founded by King Jan III Sobieski in the years 1683–94. It was built for the Capuchin friars, who also took care of the chapel at the Royal Castle. The iconographical programme of the church with its main altar depicting a scene of the Transfiguration, in which the king was buried on 23 December 1697, has never been studied in depth. The present paper seeks to answer the question: why did King Jan III choose this particular dedication for the church? In the light of the research presented here, it would appear that the monarch, who was highly educated, had a keen interest in theology. He used to discuss theological matters with Carlo Maurizio Vota, an Italian Jesuit, and with Abbot Melchior de Polignac, the French ambassador to Poland. The king was in possession of many books by the Church Fathers. Moreover, the Feast of the Transfiguration was considered to be anti-Turkish.

L'esperienza, in origine sciamanica, del manifestarsi improvviso di una luce interna o esterna rispetto al proprio corpo, in una progressione che da semplici fotismi localizzati può arrivare fino all'epifania d'un fulmine globulare, è stata descritta e tramandata da tutte le tradizioni mistiche, sia orientali che occidentali. Come attesta, oltre alle fonti testuali, la ricchissima iconografia delle aure e dei nimbi luni-solari, il cui sviluppo artistico, di probabile origine iranica, raggiunge il suo apogeo di complessificazione nell'arte e nelle dottrine realizzative del Tantrismo hindu e buddhista.

The experience, originally shamanic, of the sudden manifestation of an internal or external light with respect to one's own body, in a progression that from simple localized photisms can reach the epiphany of a globular lightning, has been described and handed down by all mystical traditions, both Eastern and Western, as attested by the textual sources, and by the very rich iconography of auras and lunar-solar nimbuses, whose artistic development, probably of Iranian origin, reaches its apogee of complexification in the art and doctrines of Hindu and Buddhist Tantrism.