Everyone knows them, everyone has them: things that hold special significance amongst the many objects that have accumulated over time. Professor Dr Andreas Speer, Director of the Thomas Institute, on an encounter between medieval and modern art.
There is a picture hanging in my office that always attracts attention, especially when you see it for the first time. Doesn’t it remind you of Andy Warhol’s portraits of Marilyn Monroe or John Lennon? But Thomas Aquinas? That is indeed unusual.
We gave the picture to my predecessor, Professor Jan Aertsen, when he took up his post as Director of the Thomas Institute. I created it myself with the help of a student assistant who was versed in graphic design.
The portrait has undergone nine variations and depicts a detail from a painting that now hangs in the left aisle of the Church of Santa Caterina in Pisa. In it, Thomas — accompanied by Plato and Aristotle — presents a book that marks the start of his first ’summa’. It is one of the oldest portraits of Thomas Aquinas, whose 750th anniversary of death and 800th anniversary of birth we recently celebrated.
Why does this encounter between medieval and modern art — even if it takes the form of imitation — demand our attention? To me, this image reveals a sense of modernity within a medieval construct of thinking, which Thomas embodies like no other. Contrary to the cherished cliché that the 13th century was a dark era, it was actually a time of great innovation and new beginnings. The concept of science emerged during this period, particularly in our cities, leading to the establishment of universities. Knowledge progress was the result of diverse influences from all the cultures and languages of the then known world. All of this had to be received and thought through. Thomas is an exemplary figure of this intellectual awakening, which was as diverse as the nine variations of the Thomas portrait inspired by Andy Warhol’s prints.
When the Thomas Institute was founded over 75 years ago, the founding director, Professor Josef Koch, deliberately chose Thomas Aquinas as its namesake — not in honour of the saint, but of the astute philosopher and intellectual who subjected all arguments to unbiased examination, even those with which he ultimately disagreed. This disputative style reflects the debates at the universities of the time. We can also learn from this today.
The Warhol Thomas painting accompanied me to my first professorship in Würzburg, not the picture from the Thomas Institute, but the portrait from Pisa, which was used as a poster motif for a Thomas conference. When I returned to Cologne as director of the Thomas Institute in 2004, the Warhol-style Thomas painting was given a prominent place on the wall of my study. When I look up from my desk, I see the picture, which reminds me to think outside the box, to unify what is supposedly incompatible and to keep trying out new things. In this way, colourfulness and variety can also be given the space they need in the everyday.