Halo (religious iconography)
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- For other uses, see Halo (disambiguation).
A halo (Greek: χαλοσ; also known as a nimbus, glory, or Gloriole) is a ring of light that surrounds an object. They are often used in religious works to depict holy or sacred figures. In Buddhist and Christian sacred art (Eastern and Western churches), holy persons (saints) are depicted with a halo in the form of a golden, yellow or white circular glow around the head.
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[edit] In Christianity
The halo represents an aura or glow of sanctity which was most prominent around the head and was conventionally drawn as a circle. It first appeared in the art culture of ancient Greece and Rome, and was incorporated into Christian art sometime in the 4th century.
Round halos are typically used to signify saints — i.e., people considered as spiritually gifted. A cross within a halo is used to represent Jesus. Triangular halos are used for representations of the Trinity. Square halos are used to depict unusually saintly living personages.
The use of halos to designate Christian saints presented a problem in the translation of the Hebrew Bible. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai carrying the tablets of the law, he is said in the Hebrew text (Exodus 34, 29) to have a glowing or radiant face. However, this would have implied a halo, which was reserved for Christian-era saints. Jerome avoided this by translating the phrase into Latin as "cornuta esset facies sua" (his face was horned). This mistake in translation is one of many mistranslations of Hebrew words in Bibles that have their origin in the Latin translation. The Hebrew word "karan"'s translation is "radiance" but when the root letters, K-R-N (kuf, resh, nun; in Hebrew letters) are vowelized differently it would mean "horn". In the passage, the radiance of Moses's face is called "karan ohr", which means "rays of light", not "horns of light".
The description of horns, however, was taken literally by Medieval and Renaissance artists, who depicted Moses with small horns growing from his forehead. Especially noteworthy in this respect is Michelangelo Buonarroti's statue of Moses in San Pietro in Vincoli.
Not all the Renaissance Italian painters gave horns to Moses. The Venetian artist Tintoretto depicts Moses' face radiating light in his series about the life of the prophet in the Scuola di San Rocco.
In popular piety, this practice has led to the literal belief that saints have visible halos around their heads, rather than it be understood as a metaphorical representation. Some faithful believe the halo to be equivalent to the Eastern religion aura, and as with the latter, believe that halos are visible to those with perception. Of the many stories about saints, some reports claimed that a saint was literally glowing. This whole-body image of radiance is sometimes called the 'aureole', which appears to radiate from the saint's entire body. The term "glory" may also refer to a glowing effusion —used in art to cover up depictions of genitalia.
During the Renaissance, when rigorous perspective came to be considered essential, the halo was changed from an aura surrounding the head to a golden ring that appeared in perspective, mysteriously floating above the heads of the saints. This form of halo is still used in many popular depictions of angels and of blessed souls in heaven.
[edit] In Buddhism
The halo has been widely used in Buddhist iconography as well since at least the 1st century AD. In Zen Buddhism, ink brush paintings also commonly use the halo in depictions of saints such as Bodhidharma. In Pure Land Buddhism the halo is used in depicting the image of Amida Buddha. Tibetan Buddhism uses halos extensively in the Thangka paintings of Buddhist saints such as Milarepa and Padmasambhava.
[edit] Spiritual Significance
Some think the halo symbolizes the saint's consciousness as 'radiating' beyond the physical body, and that it serves as a pictorial reminder to the saint's devotees of the saint's transcendence of the physical body.
A more Catholic interpretation, less dualistic in its assumptions, is that the halo represents the light of divine grace suffusing the soul, which is perfectly united and in harmony with the physical body.
In Byzantine Iconography, the halo symbolizes a window that the Sts. and Christ peer through out of heaven. In this sense, the iconographic figure resides in heaven (symbolized by the gold background) and communicates with the viewer through the window that the halo provides.
