Pesellino: making the vital visible

Great art doesn’t just delight, it educates. Andrew Davison recalls learning deep wisdom from a child as he reviews the Pesellino exhibition at the National Gallery, London.

Andrew Davison

Andrew works at the intersection of theology, science and philosophy. He is Canon and Regius Professor of Divinity at Christ Church, Oxford.

A painted altarpiece depicts a crucified Christ surrounded by followes, angels and soldiers.

The Pistoia Santa Trinita Altarpiece, Francesco Pesellino.

The National Gallery

My favourite idol features prominently in National Gallery’s new exhibition of paintings by Francesco Pesellino (1422–1457). I say that by way of provocation: I don’t really think it’s an idol, but that is how it was described to me – by a ten-year-old – in one of the best conversations I’ve ever had as a teacher.

That was fifteen years ago. I was in the gallery to give a theological tour, as part of a Confirmation class for Westminster Abbey. Half an hour in, we came to Pesellino’s Pistoia Altarpiece. It’s a glorious painting, but I was unconvinced by what it sets out to do, with its dead Christ within a portrayal of the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity is about the nature of God, as love and life, and there’s no death there.

Not that I mean to single out Pesellino for criticism. He isn’t the only painter to represent God that way. Massacio’s version is one of the most significant works of the early Florentine Renaissance, resurrecting linear perspective in painting. Just down the road from the National Gallery, at the Courtauld Institute, there’s a similar painting of the Trinity by Botticelli. They’re all magnificent, I just think that if you’re going to try to depict God, the emphasis should be on life.

Standing before Pesellino’s painting fifteen years ago, with those misgivings in mind, I asked the dozen or so kids in the Confirmation class what might be wrong with what the painter as trying to do. One child replied instantly: ‘Please Father, it is an idol.’ Dread rose within me. This child was an Arab Christian. Had he, I wondered, grown up in a culture that treated religious art as idolatrous? Had I offended his conscience continuously for the past half hour, with painting after painting? Best to find out. ‘Have the other paintings been idols?’, I asked. ‘No’, he replied. ‘Why not? Why is this one bad?’ His reply came without pause: ‘Because there’s God the Father in it.’ This was getting interesting. ‘So’, I asked, ‘it’s OK to show Jesus, like the other paintings we’ve seen today, but not God the Father?’ ‘Yes’, was his firm opinion.

These are deep waters, and this was a thoughtful child. To this day, the Orthodox Churches generally forbid depicting of God the Father in icons. Then came one of the most glorious moments of my life as a teacher. ‘Why’s that?’, I asked. ‘Why can we paint Jesus, but not the Father?’ The boy stood silent for some moments. ‘Because’, he said, the cogs of his mind clearly turning, ‘because… because God has made an image of himself in Jesus… You could see Jesus… so you can paint him.’ This was no pre-packaged answer. He was not recycling anything he’d been told before. He was recapitulating the arguments of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (at Nicaea, in AD 787) in real time.

The eight century was a turbulent time when it comes to religious images. They were supressed in the Byzantine Empire from around AD 730, with a firm condemnation in AD 754. Twenty-three years later, at Nicaea, the church reversed the ban. The decisive argument was formulated by St John of Damascus (AD 675 or 676 – 749): ‘When the Invisible One becomes visible to flesh, you may then draw a likeness of His form.’ It’s the same position as our young theologian in the National Gallery had got to on his own.

In this way, Christian art rest on Christmas: on the Incarnation, on God’s coming-into-the-flesh. Heir to the Judaic prohibition of ‘graven images’ Christianity – or most of it – made its peace with depicting holy things, and art in churches, because of Christmas, where we see ‘God made visible’ in Jesus.

In the mystery of the Word made flesh

the light of your glory has shone anew upon our minds

that seeing here God made visible,

we may be caught up in love for God whom we cannot see.

Those are words from the central acclamation of Christmas (the Eucharistic preface) at Midnight Mass (and at Holy Communion for the rest of Christmastide). ‘Seeing here God made visible’.

The events of Christmas form one of the two poles of Christian art. Some delightful examples feature in the Pesellino exhibition: a virgin and child and an Annunciation. The other supremely worthy subject for Christian art is the crucifixion and all that surrounds it. As I have noted, in the current exhibition the crucifixion features in his Trinity altarpiece. God’s humanity is most clearly witnessed at the beginning of Christ’s life, and at the end.

In the intervening years, I have mellowed towards Pesellino’s painting, and that way of depicting something about God. Painting the eternal reality of God is impossible, but in Jesus we see what we need to see. There is no death in God, but the crucifixion is what God’s life looks like when it is made flesh in a world full of evil. The crucifixion shows God’s embrace of human life to the furthest extremes of suffering and degradation. It shows the life of God overcoming death. We can hold onto what the crucifixion offers in a painting like this one, while remembering that the Resurrection underlines the priority of God’s life over death. One painting can’t say everything.

Those fifteen years ago, I was aware that I’d been in a remarkable exchange, one that I would not forget. As I found across my time as a curate, children ask the best theological questions. That might be reason to go to see the Pesellino exhibition with a child. Alongside the paintings I have mentioned already, there are also two gloriously child-friendly panels, each showing multiple events from the life of King David. They offer a sort of fifteenth century comic strip, except that the events are fused into one long scene. Pesellino was a master at painting animals. Magnifying glasses are provided to help you search them out.

Pesellino: A Renaissance Master Revealed, The National Gallery, London, until 19 March.

Article

Culture

Suffering

23 October 2025

5 min read

Protection from evil shouldn’t rely on a blue glass bead

Faith goes beyond culture in my beloved Türkiye

Becky Ruth

Becky is a a writer living in Istanbul.

Blue evil eye charms hang among a jewellery display

Vik Walker, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

‘Mashallah, your baby is so ugly!’.

The elderly ‘auntie’ stopped me in the street, exclaiming over my 3-month-old baby, who was strapped to my front, and before I could translate in my mind what she’d said, quick as lightning, she had safety-pinned a teeny tiny glass blue eyeball to the sling.

I had just moved to Türkiye from the UK and was waist-deep in culture shock. My new friend explained to me that she had pinned the ‘nazar’, a little blue bead in the shape of an eye, on my baby to protect him from evil spirits or anyone's jealousy that would cause them to wish him harm. Mashallah means ‘God wills it’, and calling the baby ‘ugly’ was also for double protection, to distract the evil eye from the fact that he was cute (he was!).

This belief in an evil eye dates back to ancient Greek and Roman times. The little blue nazar represents both the evil eye itself - a widely-feared, dangerous power that could harm others, including their crops or livelihood – and at the time offers protection against it. From Azerbaijan to Pakistan, multiple countries in central Asia and the Middle East believe in the nazar or a variation of it.

Today, the nazar is such a deeply ingrained cultural thread of life here in Türkiye that, nine years later, I hardly notice it anymore. Nazars are the country’s unofficial brand logo, and the bright azure blue with a white iris and black pupil is the colour palette for Türkiye.

Wherever I go, little blue eyeballs stare at me. From crinkly-faced kind teyzes (aunties) to the young influencer girls on Instagram, nazar necklaces are everywhere. Glass blue nazars decorate walls, tables, and trees.

Just yesterday, I was at a friend's clothes studio; for her grand opening, all the gifts from well-wishing friends for her new business were nazar-themed: a tray, a paperweight, and earrings.

So how does ‘nazar’ work? If someone compliments you or anything about you, it's believed that it can attract the evil eye with a harmful curse against you or your possessions. To cancel out the curse, there's a selection of phrases you can say, including ‘mashallah,’ or ‘Allah korusun’ (may God protect you).

Other ways you can ward off the unwanted attention of the evil eye include avoiding staring at children in the eyes for too long, spitting on the ground, and, of course, the most popular, hanging a blue glass evil eye bead wherever you can (there is even a huge one embedded on the front door threshold of our apartment.)

A close friend always tells me to pray a special nazar prayer over my youngest son because he has bright blue eyes, which she believes makes him more susceptible to the evil eye's powers. I respectfully tell her that I have a different belief, and I pray for my family for protection from Jesus. (Whom Muslims revere as a prophet, so this is acceptable to her).

As a woman of faith who has lived in Türkiye for nine years, there is so much of the beautiful Turkish culture that has become mine, and for that, I am so grateful. Living cross-culturally is a little like having a heart transplant - there's no going back. My views on health, parenting, family, and community are now all so broadened and different. But the nazar trend is something I haven't adopted. When I go shopping with my girlfriends, and they browse stunning gold necklaces with a tiny ‘nazar’ embedded in the pendant, I won’t buy one for myself.

Because faith goes one step beyond culture.

The evil eye is based on a superstition about jealousy that has malice at its core. It wants to wreak harm on others. Now, we don’t need to look far to see that we humans are pretty good at being selfish and greedy and hurting others to get what we want. Scroll through the news for five minutes, and we’re convinced of the presence of evil in our world.

But superstitious belief in the powers of nazar is not the way to ward it off.

The dictionary definition of superstition is: ‘a belief or way of behaving that is based on fear of the unknown and faith in magic or luck: a belief that certain events or things will bring good or bad luck. 'Both superstition and faith are about believing in things that can’t be seen. Superstition puts it all on you to follow some rules to avoid bad luck or evil. But that’s a bit like shooting in the dark. Believing in the nazar means you can obey all the rules of the system and hang blue beads everywhere… and you can still experience evil and suffering. A loved one gets sick. Problems at work. Whatever it might be. So, either the nazar didn’t work, or you didn’t do it right.

Faith, by contrast, still means you can experience evil and suffering – but the difference this time is, the outcome isn’t attached to a physical action you took. It's about a relationship with someone who cares about our fears rather than trusting in a blind action that may or may not work. And if we want protection from evil, we can we simply ask for it. No blue beads necessary.

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