The eyes of Marko Rupnik: black "soulless" holes?
The eyes are the "alpha and omega" of (real) Byzantine art

Why does this face bother us so much?
Do you feel vaguely threatened by it? Disquieted? Does it seem just โwrongโ somehow? Weโre going to take a careful, analytical look at it to figure out whatโs wrong based on the standard Byzantine canonical forms for iconography.
All will become clear.
Whenever the subject of Marko Rupnikโs work comes up on social media, people always talk about the โblack soulless eyesโ or the โblack voidsโ for eyes that are the stand-out feature of his style. People feel this instinctively; we look at this kind of work and even if we know nothing about Byzantine sacred art, we can feel there is something off about this depiction; itโs wrong at a visceral level.
Theyโre โdemonic,โ is the thing you hear most often in comments on Twitter and Facebook. I get a little exasperated by this and always feel like saying, โOK, cool your jets, people; Hollywood has invented the โblack eyes = demonsโ trope for you. Real life isnโt the X-files and not everything we donโt like is demons.โ But at the same time, thereโs a good reason the movie/TV industry has adopted the trope. Certain physiological changes show in the pupillary response, and generate a threat-response in the viewer. Weโll talk about that.
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Rupnikโs art isnโt โmedievalโ or Byzantine. Itโs not really even based on those forms. In fact, itโs a parody of them. It is a visual expression of the modern sophisticateโs bigotry against the rational, orderly and theologically oriented medieval mind; a sneer and a nasty snicker up the sleeve. His is the kind of mind that assumes that order and freedom and rationality were invented in the 18th century, Enlightenment developments of the Renaissance return to Classical Greek and Roman thought, unknown to primitive and superstitious medievals.
Iโve given a pretty in-depth examination of his work generally from the point of view of the canons of Byzantine art. We know now why Marko Rupnikโs work isnโt just bad art, but a deliberate subversive parody and mockery of Byzantine art and of its spiritual purpose and nature. (What are the โcanonsโ? Click here.)
I did diagrams and everything.

A little more on the Canons
In our piece on the canons of sacred art, we talked about proportionality of the human form. We saw that every measurement you can take of a particular part of the figure is related in some way to all the others. And it is this principle of integrated proportionality upon which Byzantine iconography, in all its various national iterations, is based. This is the basis of classical depictions of the human form, and was taught as the normal part of the training to everyone who wanted to be a figure painter in any genre1 until the 20th century.
We saw that the human figure is โmappableโ - you can start with one part - the head, or even the nose - and work out very exactly the size of everything else from the first form. Taking these measurements you can construct the entire form, in every detail. No need for drawing from a live model.
When you use these rules or โcanonsโ the figure will have a believable, natural look to it. We humans are hard wired to recognise these details in the human form, and we always know, even if we canโt articulate exactly why, when something is wrong or off. Itโs instinctive.

And we definitely know when itโs right, even if we donโt know why we know. These orderly human proportions are instantly recognisable when theyโre correct. And that exactitude in Byzantine art is intended for theological reasons - that is, it is intended to depict the perfections of the heavenly reality, the human form in its ideal, redeemed state.
โEyes are the alpha and the omega of iconography.โ
Human art has always been aware of the power of the eyes in the depiction of character through expression. All figure and portrait painters in every genre understand that a portraitโs expression is based on the eyes more than any other feature.
Classically trained Byzantine iconographers are taught how to apply this fundamental principle in minute detail and the rules for getting the eyes right are very stringent. Get the eyes wrong and the icon is ruined for its spiritual purpose; depicting the sanctification of the human form through Christโs Incarnation.
Antonis Kosmadakis is a contemporary iconographer trained in the classical Cretan school. Iโd recommend to anyone wanting to learn how to do it that they follow his YouTube channel. In this school there is a strong emphasis on sharply defined and extremely precise lines and forms in the drawing, completed in great detail before painting. Far from the school of pseudo-iconography of the likes of Marko Rupnik, that has infested the Catholic Church since the 1970s, the aim is always precision, not faux โprimitivismโ. This is real iconography, not the parody of it that the neo-iconoclasts have forced on the Latin Church.
So letโs take a closer look at the sample of Rupnikโs work above and see if we can analyse it according to the Byzantine standards. It quickly becomes clear that thereโs a lot more wrong with the face than just the eyes.
In real Byzantine iconography, the face is constructed based on the length of the nose, from the bottom of the tip of the nose to the imaginary line that joins the eyebrows.
The face is normally divided into three โnosesโ - one length from the bottom of the chin to the tip of the nose and the third from the top line of the nose to the hairline.
On this face of Rupnikโs Madonna and Child, this is what we get if we apply those standard canons. You can see that taking the โthree noses longโ rule of Byzantine iconography, the line of the bottom of the chin is nearly at the base of her neck, and the top of her forehead/hairline is half way over the top of her skull. We can say the head is longitudinally truncated or the nose ridiculously elongated, but either way these are not Byzantine proportions.
The eyes are normally constructed based on the nose length as well, with the distance between the pupils being the length of one nose, and the far corners of each eye being about two nose lengths apart2.
You can easily see that his vertical proportions having been way off, the eyes are completely wrong as well. Oddly, because the nose is so enormously lengthened in proportion to the length of the face, the eyes, although they look ludicrously over-sized for the face, are actually much too small. The centres of the black disks (there are no pupils) are the right length apart - one nose. But the distance between the two outer corners of the eyes is much too short to fit the long nose length.
So in fact, although the oddly truncated vertical proportions of the face make them seem huge, the problem with the eyes is really that theyโre too small - as is the rest of the face - in relation to the central and crucial feature, the nose.
Itโs important to note that the Byzantine canons for facial and figure proportions are not arbitrary or culturally determined. Theyโre based on observation of nature; us. If you took the canons and a pair of calipers and tried it on yourself youโd see. This isnโt a โByzantine thingโ - itโs a God-thing.





Now we can talk about the โblack disksโ.
Antonis the iconographer in the video above says the โeyes are of course the alpha and the omega of iconography.โ The one rule: get the eyes right, can be extended to all figure and portrait painting. Human beings from infancy learn to judge the disposition of the other person by the eyes. We look at a face and we see the eyes most of all.
Hereโs the serious artistic reason why the eyes in Rupnikโs work are wrong, and most decidedly not in keeping with either the eastern or western traditions of sacred art: theyโre expressionless. The blank Rupnik stare is the expression of a lifeless doll.
Neurologists, psychologists and anthropologists are in rare agreement on the importance of seeing the eyes in facial recognition, all the way back to our infancy. From looking at eyes, we do our social interaction and bonding. Focusing on the eyes helps us understand emotions, intentions, and attention.
We do our threat detection the same way. Our brains have dedicated areas specifically designed for facial recognition and processing of expression and it is particularly sensitive to the eye region. This neural specialization enhances our ability to extract vital survival information from looking at eyes. We do it automatically and instantly.
One of the big cues we see and react to subconsciously is the dilation and constriction of the pupils. Pupillary response can indicate an array of stimuli, from sexual arousal to imminent mortal threat. Pupils dilate in response to changes in light, but also stress and fear. It seems to be true that in the Renaissance period it was a common cosmetic practice to put drops made from the Belladonna, โAtropa belladonna,โ plant in a womanโs eyes to simulate sexual interest, the same reason women use lipstick today. Belladonna contains atropine, which acts to block certain nerve impulses which dilates the pupils. Of course, โBelladonnaโ means โBeautiful womanโ in Italian.
Itโs worth mentioning that widely dilated pupils is also a response to drugs; stimulants, hallucinogens like LSD, and certain pain relievers.

The use of โblack eyesโ as a standard trope or visual motif in horror and sci fi films and tv shows reflects our instinctive understanding of these physiological facts. Pretty much all humanoid monsters - vampires and especially people whoโve been possessed - are given the all-black eyes as the visual indicator that โSomething is wrong here.โ This looks like a person, but it is fooling you and is really a monster in a human-suit who is about to eat you; just look at the black eyes. Theyโre often changed abruptly from normal eyes to all-black as a cliched but effective jump-scare.
This is because we have that infallible, instinctive understanding that a person coming at us with enormously dilated pupils is a potential threat.
And this brings us back to Rupnik, and his โฆ odd โฆ choice to depict every one of his iconographic faces with this kind of eye. Apart from the general look of โfaux primitivismโ and his use of deliberately chaotic and disconnected lines and angles, the โblack eyesโ are his stand-out feature; weโre obviously meant to notice and take home some message. What emotional state most commonly causes this in another person? Sexual arousal or a fear response to a mortal threat, or rage. Or drugs. Not what you might think a famous Christian artist would be going for.

Artists know what theyโre doing
Someone on Twitter suggested that maybe Rupnikโs work is like this because heโs just not very good, and doesnโt know how to make eyes look natural or doesnโt know the Byzantine canons. But this comment, however it might have been charitably intended, betrays a lack of knowledge of how art works. Rupnik, as I said, is a kind of ideological poster-boy, an expert propagandist using a style of art popularised in the late 60s and 70s to convey a particular message.
What characterises it? In a single word? Childishness. Itโs deliberately intended to look โprimitive,โ like artwork from a kindergarten class: bright colours in big blocks, wobbly, mismatched or unparallel lines and angles, visual incoherence, and only vaguely representational - like a childโs stick figure portraits of his mother and father. This comported well with the social fad at the end of the 1960s to reject previous standards of behaviour and adopt a child-like, groovy, care-free approach to life, including religion. Rules, in art and religion, are for squares, man.
Artists make choices, and the really good artists make their choices based on knowledge. For all that we are appalled by his work, and his acts, he is certainly very successful at his work.
Only a keen and highly trained observational skill can take the characteristics of a face and render them in a deliberately distorted way to make an effective and eloquent caricature. The rules of art are like the vocabulary, grammar and syntax of a verbal language. A great writer can take them and use them however he wants to create particular effects and send particular messages.
If you want to deliberately distort the proportions to create particular effects, you have to start by knowing intimately what they are and how various changes will be perceived. Itโs not plausible that Marko Rupnikโs work, and the clear message it sends, was simply an accident of poor training.
Iโm not the only one
Though his work was, until recently, beloved of a certain kind of Catholic churchman and bureaucrat, and is indeed representational of the new ideology that we have suffered under as Christians in the Church since the โ70s, weโre certainly not alone in decrying it. I showed some of it to a real iconographer and asked him to help me critique it. He responded that he would rather not because looking at blasphemy was too upsetting.
Giorgio Esposito, an Italian Catholic painter of the neo-Baroque school, said recently in an interview that Rupnikโs work shows โonly a superficial and purely external imitation of Byzantine painting.โ
โThe forgery becomes evident in some details: in a too large foot firmly planted on the ground, in a hand too carnal, accustomed more to possession than to prayer, to faces that are all identical, stereotyped, almost made with a stencil, to the expression of a face dazed rather than enraptured in mystical ecstasy.
โโฆinstead of the dazzling light of Tabor, to a too rounded, hasty and superficial design which at times seems to border on comics.โ
A well known Italian conservative priest3, Monsignor Nicola Bux, warned that Rupnikโs work is an exemplar of a whole trend in contemporary western sacred art, mainly driven by the changes in liturgy and theology adopted by the Catholic Church since the 1960s.
โThe situation of sacred art has contributed to secularization and the loss of faith. And Rupnik stepped into this void. The commissioning bishops should ask themselves whether the faithful, faced with Rupnik's art, are led to prayer or rather to dancing around the golden calf, which is ourselves."ย
This really is all a โpsyopโ - a deliberate distraction tactic
We can get distracted by the professional bafflegab these worksโ defenders will use to try to shame or silence opposition. Weโre told weโre unsophisticated rubes who canโt understand why Rupnikโs work is โdeeply spiritualโ orโฆ whatever. But Iโm going to tell you now that itโs OK to trust that instinctive, visceral knowledge. Most people are pretty good at subconsciously reading cultural signs and symbols, even if we couldnโt give a learned discourse on a given sample.
We know with this stuff that weโre being told something, and itโs something not very nice. Itโs certainly not anything like an โupdatingโ of classical Byzantine sacred art. And the message is decidedly not in keeping with the 2000 year tradition of Christian sacred art. What does it tell us that Rupnikโs art is liked by almost no one but is everywhere? His ubiquity is a symbol of a Faith, a Church, occupied by an enemy power. His work is the ideological propaganda poster of a conqueror seeking to demoralise and psychologically oppress a subject people.
I'm a student of sacred art. I haven't ever looked seriously at the whys of work like his, the official justifications for it - which I'm confident are unreadable academic Jesuit drivel at best. All I know is my gut reaction to it, which is it's garbage. Garbage of a particular kind, but definitely garbage.
Stripping away the pseudo-sophisticated academic nonsense, Rupnikโs work is just more of the greying and wrinkling Flower Children pointing and jeering at our vastly superior spiritual ancestors, like a tribe of barbarian primitives camping in the ruins of the marble Roman palace theyโve just finished pulling down. You can, in fact, trust your gut on this one.
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The proportionality of the human form is also the basis of โhuman scaleโ classical architecture as well, and the same mathematical proportions show up there; but we can save that for later.
You can test this on yourself in the mirror using a piece of paper to measure your nose and then comparing. Youโre probably mostly symmetrical; most people are.
These kinds of priests are perishingly few in this country. The Anglosphere continues to think of Italy as a Catholic nation, but it is in every respect a dying culture, and almost no churchmen are willing to say so in public, knowing that the Church has been deeply complicit for decades.
Too long nose = phallic obsession. Short face = child's face. Pedophile, homosexual pedophilia, spiritual pedophilia with novices, hatred of purity.
Good for you! I'm glad you wrote this. It's timely and useful.