ABSTRACT
During the Renaissance period, the Christian image was there to be admired, read and crucially to be understood by the viewer (Lubbock, 2006). As a visualised record or ‘witness account’ of Christian activity and doctrine, the image did not simply act to document the prehistory, the life and ministry of Christ and the saints, but more importantly, it revealed the nature of specific Christian truth to the viewer by means of the religious narrative. This narrative, the element of ‘story’-telling, is necessary for the viewer and forms part of the viewing process. In order that the image may be considered carefully and ‘read’ as would be a book of religious instruction, the viewing process is not simply meaningful in terms of gainful understanding but can also be considered a pleasurable activity. Thus, as a complex construct in itself, the Christian image constituted both the Bible for the illiterate whilst similarly acting as a more sophisticated means of understanding for the educated viewer. Engagement with Christian art is not a passive or disconnected process. In order to be understood fully, and on a multiplicity of levels, the viewer must experience a full connect with the image before him, and it is this experience, that of looking, engaging, understanding and of learning, that will preoccupy us here, specifically in relation to images of sin as ‘crime’ and of punishment as features of the early Italian Last Judgement.
