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.

Review

Culture

Film & TV

30 May 2025

4 min read

Ethan Hunt is MI Jesus, and it’s ridiculous

The final instalment of Mission Impossible warns about AI, yet plays out as if written by a chatbot.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

Tom Cruise playing Ethan Hunt in an open necked shirt looks perplexed.

Tom Cruise in action.

Is this the FINAL reckoning? I’m not sure. I hope so. There has been speculation whether Tom Cruise will reprise his role as Ethan Hunt in further franchise instalments. He has expressed interest, while also suggesting that the use of the word ‘final’ is purposeful and indicative. Let us all pray that he’s being honest. I mean…he must be exhausted. The stress and strain, the pressure and pain, that he puts his body through for every Mission Impossible film is approaching elder abuse – he is 62 after all.

In a departure from tradition, Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning is an immediate sequel to Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, which released in 2023. The series which has thrived on a formula of releasing stand-alone spy stories, allowing us to enjoy familiar characters in new scenarios, has decided to make a two-parter…although you wouldn’t know it. You don’t need to have seen Dead Reckoning to pay your money to watch Final Reckoning, as the script assumes you’ve not only missed the immediate prequel, but have never viewed any other Mission Impossible film.

Goodness me, the film is plodding. It begins with a message from the President (Angela Bassett), delivered to Cruise’s super-spy Hunt. In previous instalments such messages have been a punchy way to set the stakes, roll the pitch, and then give the rest of the screen time over to remarkable action set-pieces. On this occasion we have an interminably long, and irritatingly portentous, monologue detailing why Ethan Hunt is the best of spies, the best of men, and essentially MI Jesus. The only man who can save the world from a literal apocalypse.

The premise of the film is that the malevolent, power-hungry AI known as ‘The Entity’ (could no one have thought of a better name, REALLY!?), which Hunt failed to stop in the previous film, is now at large and tipping the world towards destruction. It is manipulating the media, gaslighting governments, and slowly infiltrating the nuclear arsenals of the world, all in preparation to annihilate most of the human race in a nuclear holocaust. It then plans to rule the remaining vestiges of humanity and create a new utopia for itself. Only Ethan Hunt can stop it…just as long as he convinces world leaders to trust him, finds the nuclear submarine where ‘The Entity’ originated, defeats hundreds of bad guys, and infiltrates a top-secret bunker in South Africa.

We’re a world away from the lean and mean story of the first MI, where we only had the identities of CIA assets at stake!

Its rubbish. Genuinely rubbish.

The script is ripe. Nay! It is overripe. NAY! Burn the whole house down, because the brie has grown limbs and the fruit bowl is plotting your death. Every other conversation involves either Cruise pontificating on how the only way to defeat ‘The Entity’ is love and trust and the age of Aquarius, or someone explaining to Cruise how this mission is his destiny, because only he is good and pure enough to succeed. He’s MI Jesus, and it’s ridiculous.

The film plods and plods and plods. The whole point of this franchise is to provide the viewer with regular, breath-taking action, and yet the first hour-plus is a litany of exposition and call-backs. Ethan travels to several European capitals, for about thirty seconds apiece, before formulating his plan. This is confusing and jarring, but to add to this pain, the audience is tortured with disorienting, quick-cut montages of Hunt’s previous adventures. The plot seems to be determined to link this final, world-ending catastrophe to his past escapades…except MI2…no one has love for that.

Unfortunately, all these positives are packaged in such a self-aggrandising and cack-handed manner as to be rendered inert.

By the time the action really kicks in I was exhausted and in no mood. This is a shame, because the action is truly spectacular. A long sequence in a submarine – which is both well below safe diving depth, but is also slowly falling of an underwater cliff. A breath-taking fight between two biplanes. Gunfire galore. I recognised its brilliance on an intellectual level, but enjoyed none of it. I was too damned bamboozled by over an hour of nonsense beforehand.

The performances are fine. Cruise is the last remaining true action star, putting himself through a gruelling regimen to ensure he performs his own stunts. This shows on the screen and is very much appreciated and commendable. Simon Pegg returns as Benji to provide the comic relief. Ving Rhames’ Luther has a brief appearance which is bitter-sweet and lovable. Henry Czerny and Rolf Saxon are delightful additions – the only call-backs to the first film which don’t irritate, and actually elevate the film.

Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning is fine. It is serviceable. It delivers the heart-stopping thrills. It has timely theme: of what true humanity and human relationship is in a world dominated by AI, technology, simulated reality, and simulated interaction. This is all good. Unfortunately, all these positives are packaged in such a self-aggrandising and cack-handed manner as to be rendered inert. For a film whose story serves as an (admittedly histrionic) warning about the dangers of AI, it plays out as if designed by chatbot.

The Mission Impossible films have always been a vehicle for Tom Cruise. This has been their greatest strength – he is the last true movie star after all, and we may never see such a charismatic and powerful screen idol again. This has also been their greatest weakness. What a shame this only became apparent in the (potential) final outing.

2 stars.

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