The John of Damascus Principle: How Catholic Art and Renaissance Masters Bridged the Divine
By Shayne Heffernan
I’ve always been struck by how art can pull you into a deeper reality, something beyond the canvas. A while back, I was scrolling through an online gallery, looking at Caravaggio’s The Entombment of Christ, and I felt it—a raw, almost visceral connection to the divine. The way Caravaggio uses light and shadow, the stark humanity in the figures, it hit me hard, even through a screen. It’s no coincidence that Catholic art, especially from the late Renaissance and Baroque periods, has that kind of power. I’ve come to realize a lot of it traces back to an 8th-century monk named John of Damascus, whose ideas about the material and the spiritual shaped how the Church used art to point to God. I’m calling it the John of Damascus Principle, and you can see it in every brushstroke of the great masters.
I stumbled across John of Damascus thanks to Bishop Barron. I was listening to one of his Word on Fire podcasts a while back—something I often do while monitoring markets, keeping an eye on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the like—when he started talking about the Iconoclastic Controversy and this Arab Christian monk who stood up for religious images. You can find a lot of Bishop Barron’s talks on the Word on Fire YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@word-on-fire), and I’d highly recommend checking them out. Bishop Barron has a way of making theology feel alive, and he painted John as this bold defender of art’s role in faith. I was hooked. I started digging into John’s story, and it opened up a whole new way of looking at the art I’ve always loved.
John, also known as Saint John Damascene, lived under the Umayyad Caliphate in the 720s. He was a theologian, a poet, and a fierce advocate for icons during a rough patch in the Byzantine Empire called the Iconoclastic Controversy. Emperor Leo III had banned religious images, arguing they were idolatrous—people were worshipping the pictures instead of God. John pushed back hard. In his Apologetic Treatises Against Those Decrying the Holy Images, he laid out an idea that, as Bishop Barron put it, changed the game.
John’s argument was all about the Incarnation. Before Christ, God was invisible, uncircumscribable, as the Old Testament warns in Deuteronomy 5:8-9—no images of anything in heaven or earth, because God couldn’t be captured in a form. But when Christ became human, John said, everything shifted. God took on flesh, a face, a body you could see and touch. So, depicting Christ in an icon wasn’t idolatry—it was a testament to the reality of the Incarnation. John drew a careful line: worship belongs to God alone, but veneration, the honor you give to an icon, passes through the image to the person it represents—Christ, the Virgin Mary, the saints. For John, the material could be a bridge to the divine, as long as it reflected a truth about God’s interaction with humanity. That’s what I’m calling the John of Damascus Principle: the physical can lead you to the spiritual, if it’s grounded in a divine reality like the Incarnation.
Fast-forward a few centuries to the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. John’s ideas, though rooted in the Eastern Orthodox world, made their way to the West. The Catholic Church leaned hard into art as a way to teach, inspire, and connect the faithful to God—especially when most people couldn’t read. Churches turned into galleries of faith, with stained glass, frescoes, and sculptures telling the story of salvation. By the time the Renaissance rolled around in the 14th and 15th centuries, artists were taking John’s principle to a whole new level, using their genius to make the divine feel almost tangible.
Caravaggio, who I mentioned earlier, might be the ultimate example of this principle in the Baroque period, which followed the Renaissance. His The Entombment of Christ, painted around 1603, is a masterclass in using the material to reveal the spiritual. The scene shows Christ’s body being prepared for burial, with figures like Nicodemus and the Virgin Mary caught in raw grief. Caravaggio’s use of chiaroscuro—those dramatic contrasts of light and dark—draws your eye to Christ’s pale, lifeless body, a stark reminder of the Incarnation’s cost. The figures aren’t idealized; they’re real, gritty, human, with dirt on their hands and anguish on their faces. It’s a material work—oil on canvas—but it pulls you into the spiritual truth of Christ’s sacrifice, making the divine feel painfully close, even when you’re just looking at it on a laptop screen. That’s John’s idea at work: the physical pointing to the eternal.
The Renaissance masters set the stage for artists like Caravaggio. Take Michelangelo and his Sistine Chapel, painted from 1508 to 1512. I’ve stood under that ceiling more times than I can count, neck craned, trying to take in every detail. The Creation of Adam, with God’s finger nearly touching Adam’s, is pure theology in paint. It captures the moment of humanity’s connection to God, a visual echo of the Incarnation’s promise—that God reaches into our world. The figures are so lifelike, their muscles and expressions so real, that you almost forget you’re looking at a flat surface. Michelangelo used the material—pigment, plaster, his own sweat and frustration—to make the spiritual accessible, just as John of Damascus argued art should.
Raphael, another Renaissance giant, took this principle in his own direction. His School of Athens, painted between 1509 and 1511 in the Vatican, isn’t a religious scene on the surface—it’s a gathering of ancient philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. But dig deeper, and you’ll see how it fits John’s framework. Raphael was showing that human reason, philosophy, and knowledge all point to divine truth, a truth ultimately fulfilled in Christ. The Catholic Church loved this idea during the Renaissance, using art to bridge faith and reason. Raphael’s figures are idealized, almost glowing with a heavenly light, as if to say the material world of thought and inquiry can lead you to God. The fresco’s setting, with its grand arches and symmetry, feels like a cathedral of the mind—a space where the physical and the spiritual meet.
Leonardo da Vinci can’t be left out either. His Last Supper, painted between 1495 and 1498 in Milan, is one of the most iconic examples of Catholic art embodying John’s principle. The scene captures the moment Christ announces his betrayal, and Leonardo’s genius is in the human emotion he brings to it—the shock on the apostles’ faces, the tension in their gestures. It’s a material work, painted on a refectory wall, but it draws you into the spiritual weight of the Eucharist, the moment Christ institutes the sacrament that Catholics believe makes him present in bread and wine. Leonardo’s use of perspective, with Christ at the center, pulls your eye to the divine, making the physical space of the painting a window to the eternal.
This all ties back to Easter. It’s the heart of the Christian story—the resurrection of Christ, the ultimate proof of the Incarnation’s promise. In Catholic churches during Holy Week, you’ll see art everywhere: crosses, icons, paintings of the Passion. Caravaggio’s The Entombment of Christ takes on an even deeper meaning during Good Friday services, reminding the faithful of Christ’s sacrifice. On Easter Sunday, a church might display a work like Raphael’s Transfiguration, painted in 1520, where Christ’s divine glory shines through, a visual reminder of the resurrection’s hope. These works, inspired by John’s defense of the material as a path to the divine, make the spiritual tangible for worshippers.
I think John of Damascus got it right, and the Renaissance and Baroque artists proved it. The material—canvas, paint, plaster—can be a bridge to the spiritual, as long as it’s rooted in a truth like the Incarnation. Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo didn’t just create art; they created windows to the divine, using their talents to make God feel real, present, human. That’s the John of Damascus Principle in action, and it’s why Catholic art from these periods still moves us today, even when we’re just looking at it online. Thanks to Bishop Barron for pointing me to John—I might’ve missed him otherwise. Next time you’re browsing an online gallery or visiting a church, look at a painting and ask yourself: what truth is this pointing to? You might just find yourself a little closer to the divine.
