Dream

Depictions of prophetic dreams or dreams that advance the narrative of a sacred tale or myth are not limited to the biblical realm—saints and holy people of all religious traditions are depicted in art. Vittore Carpaccio's (c. 1455–c. 1525) lyrical Dream of St. Ursula (Italy, early sixteenth century) is devoted mostly to a depiction of the saint asleep in bed, with a rather self-effacing angel as the only evidence that we are witnessing a dream. Again, a modesty, a sense of calm permeates the composition. In Asian art, one can view depictions of the dream of Maya, the Buddah's future mother, in which, wakeful, she sees the white elephant that symbolizes her son's birth. The Indian Bhagavata Purana of the nineteenth century describes a spontaneous out-of-body experience, a dream flight by a woman named Usha, from which she returned with verifiable information. Her flight is depicted in illuminated manuscripts with a jewel-like clarity that parallels the clarity of her vision. And in Muslim iconography, Muhammad's nighttime conversations with the angel Gabriel show the prophet awake but in his bed, engaged in a rather static conversation (Iran, fifteenth century). By way of contrast, the beautiful iconography of the famous Night Journey tends to show Muhammad in action—on his mount al-Buraq, speeding through the clouds and accompanied by angels and celestial beings.

While we like to think of dreams as spontaneous, it has long been known that they can be incubated or induced, and from antiquity through the modern period, sacred sites were used as loci of incubation. In the East and in the West, temples and churches dedicated to various deities and saints were places whose architecture and geographical disposition were believed to be conducive to dream incubation, and where believers retreated, prepared themselves, and received their visionary experiences. The total environment of these places—as enhanced by art, among other factors—was key in terms of the potential success of the visionary process.

And when dreams do come, they could advocate reconsideration of even those aspects of the culture most taken for granted—the appearance of the gods. Like the dream that gave birth to the sphinx, dreams can often be the cause of the creation of new iconography or the alteration of existing iconographic conventions, as they represent the direct intervention of the higher powers through the realm of vision. Although part of a strictly aniconic culture when it came to the depiction of the deity, the visions of the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, though both glimpses of the God of Israel, presented radically different "images" of that imageless deity that influenced the way those in the West envision God. Likewise, Kan Hiu, a Chinese Buddhist monk who was also a painter and a poet in the late ninth and early tenth century, was able to radically change conventional portrayals of the Buddhist saints through the inspiration of dreams. The way in which he envisioned these people was sometimes at odds with historical tradition as transmitted by the mainstream, but his vision was so compelling that the tradition changed to accommodate it. And in the same way, the visions of St. Bridget of Sweden (c. 1303–1373) completely altered the view of the Nativity for Christianity. The snowy landscape, the broken manger, the many details of the story as it is commonly depicted are responses to her dream.

Finally, inspiration and even instruction in art is attributed to dreams. William Blake (1757–1827) claimed he was instructed in painting by a spirit who appeared in his dreams in the form of a man, and whom he depicted in a lost sketch (copied, fortunately, by a friend around 1819).