Gold ground in the context of "Eternal life (Christianity)"

⭐ In the context of Christian eschatology, the concept of eternal life, as presented in the New Testament, is considered to potentially begin…

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⭐ Core Definition: Gold ground

Gold ground (both a noun and adjective) or gold-ground (adjective) is a term in art history for a style of images with all or most of the background in a solid gold colour. Historically, real gold leaf has normally been used, giving a luxurious appearance. The style has been used in several periods and places, but is especially associated with Byzantine and medieval art in mosaic, illuminated manuscripts and panel paintings, where it was for many centuries the dominant style for some types of images, such as icons. For three-dimensional objects, the term is gilded or gold-plated.

Gold in mosaic began in Roman mosaics around the 1st century AD, and originally was used for details and had no particular religious connotation, but in Early Christian art it came to be regarded as very suitable for representing Christian religious figures, highlighting them against a plain but glistering background that might be read as representing heaven, or a less specific spiritual plane. Full-length figures often stand on more naturalistically coloured ground, with the sky in gold, but some are shown fully surrounded by gold. The style could not be used in fresco, but was adapted very successfully for miniatures in manuscripts and the increasingly important portable icons on wood. In all of these the style required a good deal of extra skilled work, but because of the extreme thinness of the gold leaf used, the cost of the gold bullion used was relatively low; lapis lazuli blue seems to have been at least as expensive to use.

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👉 Gold ground in the context of Eternal life (Christianity)

Eternal life traditionally refers to continued life after death, as outlined in Christian eschatology. The Apostles' Creed testifies: "I believe... the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting." In this view, eternal life commences after the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the dead, although in the New Testament's Johannine literature there are references to eternal life commencing in the earthly life of the believer, possibly indicating an inaugurated eschatology.

According to mainstream Christian theology, after death but before the Second Coming, the saved live with God in an intermediate state, but after the Second Coming, experience the physical resurrection of the dead and the physical recreation of a New Earth. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, "By death the soul is separated from the body, but in the resurrection God will give incorruptible life to our body, transformed by reunion with our soul. Just as Christ is risen and lives for ever, so all of us will rise at the last day." N.T. Wright argues that "God's plan is not to abandon this world... Rather, he intends to remake it. And when he does, he will raise all people to new bodily life to live in it. That is the promise of the Christian gospel."

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Gold ground in the context of Tempera

Tempera (Italian: [ˈtɛmpera]) is a permanent, fast-drying painting medium consisting of pigments mixed with a water-soluble binder medium, usually glutinous material such as egg yolk. There are several types of tempera paint, but the one containing egg yolk is called egg tempera. Tempera paint made from the milk protein is Casein paint. If the binder is synthetic PVA, the result is polyvinyl acetate tempera. A distemper paint consisting of pigment and binders such as cornstarch, gum arabic and other gums is called poster paint in certain parts of the world, and it is also often confusingly referred to as "tempera paint", although the binders in this paint are different from traditional egg tempera paints and the visual effect is more like gouache.

The term Tempera also refers to the paintings done in any kind of these tempera mediums.

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Gold ground in the context of Salus Populi Romani

Salus Populi Romani (English: Protectress of the Roman people, also known as the Salvific Health of the Roman people) is a Roman Catholic title associated with the venerated image of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Rome. This Byzantine icon of the Madonna and Child Jesus holding a Gospel book on a gold ground, now heavily overpainted, is kept in the Borghese (Pauline) Chapel of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major.

The image arrived in Rome in 590 A.D. during the reign of Pope Gregory I. Pope Gregory XVI granted the image a canonical coronation on 15 August 1838 through the Papal bull Cælestis Regina Maxima. Pope Pius XII crowned the image again for the secondary time and ordered a public religious procession during the Marian year of 1 November 1954. The image was cleaned and restored by the Vatican Museum, then given a Pontifical Mass on 28 January 2018.

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Gold ground in the context of Byzantine mosaic

Byzantine mosaics are mosaics produced from the 4th to 15th centuries in and under the influence of the Byzantine Empire. Mosaics were some of the most popular and historically significant art forms produced in the empire, and they are still studied extensively by art historians. Although Byzantine mosaics evolved out of earlier Hellenistic and Roman practices and styles, craftspeople within the Byzantine Empire made important technical advances and developed mosaic art into a unique and powerful form of personal and religious expression that exerted significant influence on Islamic art produced in Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates and the Ottoman Empire.

There are two main types of mosaic surviving from this period: wall mosaics in churches, and sometimes palaces, made using glass tesserae, sometimes backed by gold leaf for a gold ground effect, and floor mosaics that have mostly been found by archaeology. These often use stone pieces, and are generally less refined in creating their images. Survivals of secular wall-mosaics are few, but they show similar subject matter to floor mosaics, where many of the subjects are very similar in both churches and houses; it was not acceptable for images of sacred figures to be walked upon. Religious mosaics show similar subject matter to that found in other surviving religious Byzantine art in painted icons and manuscript miniatures. Floor mosaics often have images of geometrical patterns, often interspersed with animals. Scenes of hunting and venatio, arena displays where animals are killed, are popular.

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Gold ground in the context of Italo-Byzantine

Italo-Byzantine is a style term in art history, mostly used for medieval paintings produced in Italy under heavy influence from Byzantine art. It initially covers religious paintings copying or imitating the standard Byzantine icon types, but painted by artists without a training in Byzantine techniques. These are versions of Byzantine icons, most of the Madonna and Child, but also of other subjects; essentially they introduced the relatively small portable painting with a frame to Western Europe. Very often they are on a gold ground. It was the dominant style in Italian painting until the end of the 13th century, when Cimabue and Giotto began to take Italian, or at least Florentine, painting into new territory. But the style continued until the 15th century and beyond in some areas and contexts.

Maniera greca ("Greek style/manner") was the Italian term used at the time, and by Vasari and others; it is one of the first post-classical European terms for style in art. Vasari was no admirer, defining the Renaissance as a rejection of "that clumsy Greek style" ("quella greca goffa maniera"); other Renaissance writers were similarly critical.

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