A halo (),. also called a nimbus, aureole, glory or gloriole (), is a crown of light rays, circle or disk of light that surrounds a person in works of art. The halo occurs in the iconography of many religions to indicate holy or sacred figures, and has at various periods also been used in images of rulers and heroes. In the religious art of Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism (among other religions), sacred people may be depicted with a halo in the form of a circular glow, or flames in Asian art, around the head or around the whole body—this last form is often called a mandorla.
Halos may be shown as almost any colour or combination of colours, but are most often depicted as golden, yellow or white (when representing light) or as red (when representing flames). The earliest artistic depictions of halos were probably in Ancient Egyptian art.Gamal, Shaza, and Noha Moustafa Shalaby. 2023. "The Concept of the Halo: A Dialogue Between Graeco-Roman and Byzantine Egypt." International Academic Journal Faculty of Tourism and Hotel Management 9 (1):1-30.
Ancient Mesopotamia and Persia Sumerian religious literature frequently speaks of ( in Akkadian), a "brilliant, visible glamour which is exuded by gods, heroes, sometimes by kings, and also by temples of great holiness and by gods' symbols and emblems."J. Black and A. Green, Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia (Austin, 1992) p. 130.
Persian mythology, and later Zoroastrian philosophy, speaks of the similar concept of Khvarenah (later farrah), a divine, radiant power that sanctified a king and his reign. It was most often depicted as a phoenix-like bird, the Simurgh.
Ancient Greek world
Homer describes a more-than-natural light around the heads of heroes in battle.Iliad v.4ff, xviii.203ff. Depictions of Perseus in the act of slaying Medusa, with lines radiating from his head, appear on a white-ground toiletry box and on a slightly later red-figured vase in the style of Polygnotos, .Marjorie J. Milne, "Perseus and Medusa on an Attic Vase" The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin New Series, 4.5 (January 1946, pp. 126–130) 126.p.) On painted wares from south Italy, radiant lines or simple haloes appear on a range of mythic figures: Lyssa, a personification of madness; a sphinx; a sea demon; and Thetis, the sea-nymph who was mother to Achilles.L. Stephani, "Nimbus und Strahlenkranz in den Werken der Alten Kunst" in Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences de Saint-Petersbourg, series vi, vol. vol ix, noted in Milne 1946:130. The Colossus of Rhodes was a statue of the sun-god Helios and had his usual radiate crown (copied for the Statue of Liberty). Hellenistic rulers are often shown wearing radiate crowns that seem clearly to imitate this effect.
Asian art
In India, the use of halo might date back to the second half of the second millennium BC. Two figures appliqued on a pottery vase fragment from Daimabad's Malwa phase (1600–1400 BC) have been interpreted as a holy figure resembling the later Hindu god Shiva and an attendant, both with halos surrounding their heads, Aureola have been widely used in Indian art, particularly in Buddhist iconography where it has appeared since at least the 1st century AD; the Kushan Bimaran casket in the British Museum is dated 60 AD (at least between 30BC and 200 AD). The rulers of the Kushan Empire were perhaps the earliest to give themselves haloes on their coins, and the nimbus in art may have originated in Central Asia and spread both east and west.
In Chinese and Japanese Buddhist art, the halo has also been used since the earliest periods in depicting the image of Amitabha Buddha and others. Tibetan Buddhism uses haloes and aureoles of many types, drawing from both Indian and Chinese traditions, extensively in statues and Thangka paintings of Buddhist saints such as Milarepa and Padmasambhava and deities. Different coloured haloes have specific meanings: orange for monks, green for the Buddha and other more elevated beings,including the Qianlong Emperor – see note below. Rhie, Marylin and Thurman, Robert (eds):Wisdom And Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet, p. 99, & passim, 2000, 1991, and commonly figures have both a halo for the head, and another circular one for the body, the two often intersecting somewhere around the head or neck. Thin lines of gold often radiate outwards or inwards from the rim of the halo, and sometimes a whole halo is made up of these.Rhie and Thurman, pp 77, 176, 197 etc.
In India the head halo is called or , while the full body halo is .Gopinatha Rao, T. A. (1985). Elements of Hindu Iconography. pp. 31–32. Motilal Banarsidass. Elaborate haloes and especially aureoles also appear in Hindu sculpture, where they tend to develop into architectural frames in which the original idea can be hard to recognise. Theravada Buddhism and Jainism did not use the halo for many centuries, but later adopted it, though less thoroughly than other religious groups.
In Asian art, the nimbus is often imagined as consisting not just of light, but of flames. This type seems to first appear on the sculpture of fire-deity Agnipani dated to 100 BCE, which has a flame-shaped aureole with incised tongues of flames behind his head.Dated 100 BCE in Fig. 86-87, page 365-368 in In Chinese bronzes, the earliest surviving examples date from before 450.No doubt, as later, the same motif appeared in paintings, but none survive from this early. L Sickman & A Soper, "The Art and Architecture of China", Pelican History of Art, 3rd ed 1971, pp. 86–7, Penguin (now Yale History of Art), LOC 70-125675 The depiction of the flames may be very formalized, as in the regular little flames on the ring aureole surrounding many Chola bronzes and other classic Hindu sculptures of divinities, or very prominent, as with the more realistic flames, and sometimes smoke, shown rising to a peak behind many Tibetan Buddhist depictions of the "wrathful aspect" of divinities, and also in Persian miniatures of the classic period. Sometimes a thin line of flames rise up from the edges of a circular halo in Buddhist examples.Often in paintings from the Dunhuang caves, see Anne Farrer (ed), "Caves of the Thousand Buddhas", 1990, British Museum publications, nos 42, 53, 54 etc, In Tibetan paintings the flames are often shown as blown by a wind,Rhie and Thurman, p. 161 usually from left to right. This type is also very rarely found, and on a smaller scale, in medieval Christian art.See Didron
Halos are found in Islamic art from various places and periods, especially in Persian miniatures and Moghul and Ottoman art influenced by them. Flaming halos derived from Buddhist art surround angels, and similar ones are often seen around Muhammad and other sacred human figures. From the early 17th century, plainer round haloes appear in portraits of Mughal Emperors and subsequently Rajput and Sikh rulers; despite the more local precedents art historians believe the Mughals took the motif from European religious art, though it expresses a Persian idea of the God-given charisma of kingship that is far older.Crill & Jariwala, 29 and note The Ottomans avoided using halos for the sultans, despite their title as Caliph, and they are only seen on Chinese emperors if they are posing as Buddhist religious figures, as some felt entitled to do.Such as the Qianlong Emperor the Qianlong Emperor in Buddhist Dress, and his father.
Egypt and Asia
Roman art
The halo represents an aura or the glow of sanctity which was conventionally drawn encircling the head. It first appeared in the culture of Hellenistic Greece and Rome, possibly related to the Zoroastrian hvarena – "glory" or "divine lustre" – which marked the Persian kings, and may have been imported with Mithraism. Though Roman paintings have largely disappeared, save some fresco decorations, the haloed figure remains fresh in Roman mosaics. In a 2nd-century AD Roman floor mosaic preserved at Bardo, Tunisia, a haloed Poseidon appears in his chariot drawn by hippocamps. Significantly, the triton and nereid who accompany the sea-god are not haloed.
In a late 2nd century AD floor mosaic from Thysdrus, El Djem, (illustration) Apollo Helios is identified by his effulgent halo. Another haloed Apollo in mosaic, from Hadrumentum, is in the museum at Sousse. The conventions of this representation, head tilted, lips slightly parted, large-eyed, curling hair cut in locks grazing the neck, were developed in the 3rd century BC to depict Alexander the Great (Bieber 1964; Yalouris 1980). Sometime after this mosaic was executed, the Emperor began to be depicted with a halo,Initially only dead and therefore deified Emperors were haloed, later the living Catholic Encyclopedia which was not abandoned when they became Christian; initially Christ only had one when shown on a throne as Christ in Majesty.
Christian art
The halo was incorporated into Early Christian art sometime in the 4th century with the earliest iconic images of Christ, initially the only figure shown with one (together with his symbol, the Lamb of God). Initially the halo was regarded by many as a representation of the Logos of Christ, his divine nature, and therefore in very early (before 500) depictions of Christ before his Baptism by John he tends not to be shown with a halo, it being a matter of debate whether his Logos was innate from conception (the Catholic/Lutheran/Orthodox view), or acquired at Baptism (the Adoptionist view). At this period he is also shown as a child or youth in Baptisms, though this may be a hieratic rather than an age-related representation.G Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, Vol. I, 1971 (English trans. from German), Lund Humphries, London, p. 135, figs 150-53, 346–54.
A cruciform halo, that is to say a halo with a cross within, or extending beyond, the circle is used to represent the persons of the Holy Trinity, especially Jesus, and especially in medieval art. In Byzantine and Orthodox images, inside each of the bars of the cross in Christ's halo is one of the Greek letters Ο Ω Ν, making up —"ho ōn", literally, "the Existing One"—indicating the divinity of Jesus. At least in later Orthodox images, each bar of this cross is composed of three lines, symbolising the dogmas of the Trinity, the oneness of God and the two natures of Christ.
In mosaics in Santa Maria Maggiore (432–40) the juvenile Christ has a four-armed cross either on top of his head in the radius of the nimbus, or placed above the radius, but this is unusual. In the same mosaics the accompanying angels have haloes (as, in a continuation of the Imperial tradition, does King Herod), but not Mary and Joseph. Occasionally other figures have crossed haloes, such as the seven doves representing the Seven gifts of the Holy Spirit in the 11th century Codex Vyssegradensis Tree of Jesse (where Jesse and Isaiah also have plain haloes, as do the Ancestors of Christ in other miniatures).G Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, Vol. I, 1971 (English trans. from German), Lund Humphries, London, figs 20–22,
Later, triangular haloes are sometimes given to God the Father to represent the Trinity.Nationalgallery.org.uk , Late 15th century reliefs by Jacopo della Quercia on the portal of San Petronio, Bologna are an early example of the triangular halo. According to Didron, Adolphe Napoléon: Christian Iconography: Or, The History of Christian Art in the Middle Ages, London, 1851, Vol 2, p30, this is "extremely rare in France, but common enough in Italy and Greece When he is represented by a hand emerging from a cloud, this may be given a halo.