Stefano da Putignano’s Trinity (1520) depicts Jesus on the cross placed between the legs of an enthroned God the Father with the dove of the Holy Spirit connecting the two. Located in the small southern Italian city of Turi, this painted stone statue is one of the earliest examples of a human-sized statue of God the Father. It is unique in its medium and method but also fits into a larger discourse from this period on representing the ineffable.
The Hebrew Bible claims that the worship of any idol, whether “in heaven above, or earth beneath” is strictly forbidden (Exodus, 20:2-6). From the very beginning of the Christian faith, the destruction of idols and denouncement of idolatry was a symbol of Christian triumph over Paganism. The Renaissance marked a significant change in devotional practices. The discourse of artists and intellectuals expanded the way humans conceived of and interacted with embodied divinity.
Through significant visual comparison, this project fits Stefano’s Trinity into the iconographic tradition of representing God and the Trinity and incorporates that into a larger discussion on idolatry and the role of devotional images in the Italian Renaissance. It outlines the changing discourse around images both in artistic and religious contexts. Analyzing the Trinity, it questions how an artist can capture the unknowable qualities of God and how His embodiment in stone changes not only the way we see but interact with the statue. Through an exploration of idolatry, this project serves as a case study on the limits of representing the bodily divine in the Renaissance.