I recently completed another freelance-ish Easter series entitled Easter Came Down. This is essentially a heavily stylized interpretation of the Anastasis icon, or Christ’s Descent into Hell. In this icon Christ is depicted, enveloped in glory, bursting into the realm of darkness and death and rescuing the entombed Adam and Eve to bring them to their eternal home.
It has always been an interesting aspect of this icon that Christ is not only beckoning them to escape from their bondage, or inviting them to share in the life of the Trinity, but is dragging them by the hand out of their graves.
While in Western Christendom artwork relating to the Resurrection tends to focus on the empty tomb, for the Eastern Church the Anastasis is the depiction of the Resurrection, for it speaks to the ultimate reconciliation of God and Man and is the culmination of the Incarnation in which Christ, who took on our humanity, by the act of suffering and dying in his humanity releases us from our bondage to sin, and by his Resurrection opens the gates of heaven and ensures the resurrection of the body and the final and perfect union of God and Man.
On the front panel I chose the flying Lamb as an iconic representation of the Lamb of God, who has suffered (the blood on this sheep) but yet is intentionally descending to Hell where the lot of humanity groans and pines in their slavery to death. The dragons and snakes represent the forces of darkness- Satan and his angels- who stake their claim on a fallen humanity.
The back panel continues the narrative flow in that the Lamb of God has completed his rescue, making the upward climb to Heaven. In Hell the great dragon suffers a mortal blow, chained forever in the perdition awaiting those who reject and fight against God.
Easter is ultimately a violent holiday, for sin and death suffer the ruinous buffets of the God who is not content to see his creation lapse into non-being, but makes the great descent to become one with his creation, and by doing so completely overthrows the powers of darkness forever.
Tags: bondage, death, demons, design, dragon, easter, God, hell, humanity, Incarnation, lamb, sin
