God the Father in Western art

For about a thousand years, in obedience to interpretations of specific Bible passages, pictorial depictions of God in Western Christianity had been avoided by Christian artists. At first only the Hand of God, often emerging from a cloud, was portrayed. Gradually, portrayals of the head and later the whole figure were depicted, and by the time of the Renaissance artistic representations of God the Father were freely used in the Western Church.

God the Father can be seen in some late Byzantine Cretan School icons, & ones from the borders of the Catholic & Orthodox worlds, under Western influence, but after the Russian Orthodox Church came down firmly against depicting him in 1667, he can hardly be seen in Russian art. Protestants generally disapprove of the depiction of God the Father, and originally did so strongly.

Early Christians believed that the words of Book of Exodus 33:20 "Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see Me and live" and of the Gospel of John 1:18: "No man hath seen God at any time" were meant to apply not only to the Father, but to all attempts at the depiction of the Father.

The Hand of God, an artistic metaphor, is found several times in the only ancient synagogue with a large surviving decorative scheme, the Dura Europos Synagogue of the mid-3rd century, and was probably adopted into Early Christian art from Jewish art. It was common in Late Antique art in both East and West, and remained the main way of depicting the actions or approval of God the Father in the West until about the end of the Romanesque period.

Historically considered, God the Father is more frequently manifested in the Old Testament, while the Son is manifested in the New Testament. Hence it might be said that the Old Testament refers more especially to the history of the Father and the New Testament to that of the Son. Yet, in early depictions of scenes from the Old Testament, artists used the conventional depiction of Jesus to represent the Father, especially in depictions of the story of Adam and Eve, the most frequently depicted Old Testament narrative shown in Early Medieval art, and one that was felt to require the depiction of a figure of God "walking in the garden" (Genesis 3:8).

...
Wikipedia