DAVID MAYERNIK
LTD.
Sacred Art
I have painted church frescoes and altar paintings on commission, along with work created on my own initiative, exploring the affective power of classical narrative on sacred themes. In the Renaissance tradition, the humanist culture of rhetoric and poetics gives sacred art its narrative structure.
Beauty is an essential aspect of the sacred.
Sacred Art is not just the illustration or documentation of sacred subjects: it aspires to inspire reflection, emulation, and devotion. Like oratory, it is rhetorical, engaging the viewer not only with sacred subjects but sacred meditations. For those reasons, and more, the great tradition of Christian sacred art has not been realist, but classical, or at least idealizing—transcending the ordinary and mundane, expressing both specific moments in biblical or hagiographic narrative and timeless truths.
Classical Sacred Art
