The idea that St. Luke the Apostle actually painted icons of our Lord and His Mother is often scoffed at in academic circles, especially given that the earliest witness to this tradition comes from Theodorus Lector in the 6th century. However, given how firmly rooted this belief is in the Church’s liturgical life, I do actually think it’s a tradition we shouldn’t dispense with so easily. And so, in this article, I just want to put together some pieces of data given to us in Scripture that suggest the plausibility of Luke being an iconographer.
To begin, what do we know about the Apostle Luke? Scripture only gives us a small amount of information about his personal life. We know that St. Luke was a physician (Col. 4:14), a missionary-companion of St. Paul (2 Tim. 4:11), and probably a Gentile convert. From this we can glean that he almost certainly received an education in the medical arts from some Gentile academy, possibly the Alexandrian school of medicine, which was one of the most famous at the time. Regardless of what specific form of training Luke received, it would’ve been similar to the kind of education the physician Galen would receive a couple centuries later. This is important because Galen, like many other antique physicians, was likely a decent artist.
Of course, physicians like Galen would’ve reserved their artistic skills for trying to accurately depict human anatomy, but this would’ve undoubtedly given them the ability to draw portraits in other contexts as well. And so if St. Luke was also a Gentile physician before his conversion, it’s not a stretch to suppose that he also received some artistic training through his study of the human body. But so what if it’s probable that Luke knew how to paint? Is there anything to suggest that he actually did?
While I’ll admit the case for this is somewhat tenuous, I do genuinely believe that there is something to it. The only place Scripture arguably references a new covenant icon is in Galatians 3:1, “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.” Given the fact that St. Paul doesn’t dwell much on this statement, it has many plausible interpretations, one of which is that it’s talking about an icon of the Crucifixion (I believe N.T. Wright affirms this view). In my opinion, this is very likely the correct interpretation when all things are considered.
The word that gets translated as “publicly portrayed” is προεγράφη, which Paul only uses in two other places (Rom. 15:4, Eph. 3:3-4), and in both contexts it refers to something that’s been “written before” and is now being read out. The reason it’s not translated this way in Galatians 3:1 seems to be because Paul explicitly states that Jesus’ Crucifixion was “written out” before the very “eyes” of the Galatians, implying that it was something visual rather than audible. Some would argue that Paul is simply using hyperbolic language to refer to the great detail in which the Gospel was preached to the Galatians, however this interpretation need not be divorced from the iconographic one. In the Church’s theology of images, icons are to the eyes what words are to the ears, which is why even today they’re often said to be “written” instead of “painted.” It’s very possible, then, that St. Paul was anticipating this theology when calling the Galatians to repentance; because they not only heard the Gospel with their ears, but even saw it with their own eyes in an icon, something that would’ve been extremely rare and valuable in the early Church.
Now, if the Galatians were able to see an icon of Christ crucified, and Paul knew about this, then the question of who painted it naturally arises. And as we showed above, the only person we know of in the NT who might have had any artistic talent would be St. Luke, given his background as a physician. With this in mind, consider Acts 16:6-10. Luke documents how Paul and his companions “went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia,” and then just a few sentences later he seamlessly includes himself among those traveling with Paul: “Immediately we sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the Gospel to them.” Given this seamless transition, it’s possible that Luke was among those traveling with Paul to visit the Church of Galatia, and so it could be during this time that the Galatians saw an icon painted by St. Luke himself.
Even if Luke wasn’t with Paul in Galatia, it was almost certainly around this time that Paul and Luke were becoming acquainted with one another, and so it’s also possible that Paul would have just taken one of Luke’s icons to the Galatian Church without him accompanying. Whatever the case, these are the main takeaways:
It’s likely that St. Luke had artistic training due to his education in medicine.
It’s likely that St. Paul knew about the Galatians having seen an icon of Christ.
It was around the time of his interaction with the Galatians that Luke and Paul became acquainted.
When these three pieces of information are pulled together, it at least becomes plausible that St. Luke was indeed a Christian iconographer.
With this in mind, consider how the Church not only believes that St. Luke painted icons of Christ, but also of His All-Holy Mother. The reason for this belief is largely because of the strong Marian themes that are present throughout Luke’s writings. The evangelist begins his Gospel by portraying our Lady as the Ark of the Covenant and the Queen of God’s Kingdom (Lk. 1:35-56); he recounts how Jesus affirmed the blessedness of our Lady’s physical body, while emphasizing even more the blessedness of her faith (Lk. 11:27-28 cf. 1:45); and he begins the book of Acts with a foreshadow of the Virgin’s Assumption into Heaven. As many are aware, the reason St. Luke had such a high Mariology is probably because he personally interacted with the blessed Mother herself.
Simply reading the great detail in which Luke 1 explains our Lord’s Nativity alone suggests that he was getting the story from someone who was actually there (i.e. the Theotokos), and this seems to be confirmed in Luke 2:19: “And Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.” The most likely reason why St. Luke included this detail about Mary remembering “all of these things” is because she was his primary source. The Apostle does this again in Luke 24:5-10 when he, unlike the other Synoptics, lists the women at the tomb by name and notes how they “remembered” the angel’s words (Lk. 24:8). As Richard Baukum explains, “The implication is surely that Luke owed some of his special traditions to one or more than one of [these women].” St. Luke cared a lot about eye-witness accounts (cf. Lk. 1:1-4), and so there’s no reason to suspect he’d have a lower standard for the Lord’s infancy narrative.
Thus, we know with near certainty that St. Luke spent time with the Immaculate Virgin to hear her story, and he was able to see this story’s theological riches. If we tie this to what was demonstrated above, namely that Luke being Christianity’s first iconographer is plausible, then it’s easy to see how the Church can claim that our depictions of the Theotokos originate from St. Luke. As he was attentively listening to the wisdom our Lady spoke, at some point I’m sure he stopped and asked if he could draw her portrait, in order to depict in colors what his Gospel would depict in words (following St. Paul’s theology of icons): Infant Jesus sitting upon the throne of His Mother.
St. Luke the Iconographer?
Great! An additional factor to consider is that the Gospel of Luke pays more attention to Mary than the other three, so it is not surprising that if Luke was a Christian iconographer that he would actually have painted icons of our Lord and His Mother. Anyway, do you intend to write something similar regarding the Shroud?
Do you intend to post on this substack instead of on your blog going forward?