The four "holy animals" or the Tetramorph

This article by Ana-Maria Girleanu-Guichard offers a historical and iconographic study of the Tetramorph, a motif representing the four "holy creatures" — lion, bull, man and eagle — associated with the four evangelists in medieval Christian art. The author traces the origins of this motif from the prophetic visions of Ezekiel and their Assyro-Babylonian roots, through the mosaics of ancient synagogues, the paintings of the Roman catacombs and the Byzantine iconography of Ravenna. The study also examines the patristic commentaries of Irenaeus of Lyon, Origen, Jerome and Gregory the Great, who established the symbolic correspondences between the Living Creatures, the evangelists and the cardinal virtues. The main contribution of the article is to show that the Tetramorph constitutes both a theological symbol and a sign of the sacred, articulating Jewish heritage, Greco-Roman tradition and Christian theology in an image of remarkable semiotic density.