Trifacial Trinity

The visual concept of a three-headed deity has roots in pre-Christian and pagan traditions across Europe and Asia.^[2] The number three in ancient religious iconography often signified an intensification of power and the "all-seeing" nature of the divine.^[6]

• Celtic and Gallic cultures: Multiple Gallo-Roman monuments dating to the 1st to the 3rd centuries AD with three-headed god figures, are found widely from Belgium to Aquitaine.^[7] Three-faced stone heads, such as the Corleck Head found in Ireland (ca. 2nd century BCE), indicate that such imagery held a significant position among the Celts of Gaul and the Danube region.^[8]
• Germanic paganism: A fifth-century AD golden horn found at Gallehus in Denmark features a three-headed standing figure.^[7]
• Balkan cultures: A tricephalous "Thracian Rider" can be occasionally found among hundreds of his (single-headed) images on steles from the second and third centuries AD.^[7]
• Slavic religion: The god Triglav (meaning "three-headed") was depicted as a man with three goat heads or faces, symbolizing rule over the sky, earth, and underworld.^[9] Raffaele Pettazzoni singles out Triglav cult at Stettin.^[10] Other polycephalous Baltic-Slavic deities included the four-headed Svantevit, the seven-headed Rugievit, and, in Karentia, five-headed Porevit and Porenut (the latter had one head on its breast).^[10]
• Classical antiquity: Greco-Roman deities such as Hecate and Hermes were sometimes depicted with three heads.^[6] The Roman god Janus was typically a bifrons (two-faced) looking forward and backward, a motif that influenced later medieval allegory.^[11]
• Hinduism: The iconography may share distant links with polycephalous Hindu deities, such as the three-headed Shiva or four-headed Brahma.^[6]
• Finno-Ugric and Siberian peoples: Carved wooden idols with multiple faces were venerated, including a seven-headed figure from Obdorsk and the Samoyed idol Weesakko,^{[verification needed]} which had three or seven faces.^[12]

Scholars suggest that the Christian adoption of this form was a "sublimated fulfilment" of the pagan vision, attempting to resolve the artistic difficulty of representing the Triune God.^[13] However, the motif also overlaps with the iconography of the Devil depicted with three faces on one head, as well as depictions of "monstrous peoples" and demonized heretics, which utilized a similar principle of fused visages.^[14]

In the early church, the visual depiction of the Trinity was often sidestepped to avoid confusion. Artists relied on "Trinitarian Images", episodes from the Scriptures that can hint at the subject, like the Three Visitors to Abraham in Genesis 18, or aniconic symbols like the triangle, though the latter was criticized by Saint Augustine.^[4]

Christian art applied the pagan three-headed motif in two opposed ways: diabolical and divine.^[15] Pettazzoni argues that both types of imagery developed in parallel based on pagan examples, with diabolical application being chronologically earlier than the divine Trinity representations.^[16] Three-headed and horned devil relief can be found at the twelfth-century church of San Pietro, Tuscania, and a carpet from Skog, Sweden.^[15]

The 12th century saw the spread of the direct representation of the Trinity, leading to radical iconographical solutions. These included the "triandric" Trinity (three identical human figures) and the "trifacial" or "tricephalous" Trinity (a single body with three fused faces).^[4] The earliest examples of the tricephalous type appeared in 12th-century French manuscripts.^[2] Adolphe Napoléon Didron suggested that this Christian imagery originated in France and spread outwards, but Pettazzoni argues that due to the widespread existence of pagan three-headed deities across Europe the form may have a polygenetic or Balkan origin.^[17]

The iconography spread throughout Europe, becoming particularly popular in Florence, Italy, during the 14th century and the Renaissance.^[13][16] An Italian antiphonary from the 15th century depicts a three-faced Trinity with four eyes.^[18] The motif was also present in the Balkans; frescoes in the narthex of the Church of St. Clement in Ohrid (1295) and the Church of the Dormition in Matejce (c. 1360) feature the tricephalous Trinity.^[18] In the 18th century, an example of this imagery, unusual for Orthodox iconography, could be found in the Church of St. George on Mount Athos.^[18]

Major Renaissance artists, including Andrea del Sarto, Fra Filippo Lippi, and Donatello, utilized this iconography to explore the mystery of the Trinity.^[13] In these depictions, the three faces often look in different directions, symbolizing God's omniscience over space and time.^[19]

Despite its use by prominent artists, the trifacial Trinity was controversial. Scholastic theologians and humanists criticized the imagery as a "monster" (monstrum in natura rerum) and an aberration of nature.^[20] The earliest theological protests against the representation emerged in the fifteenth century.^[16] Archbishop Antoninus of Florence (1389–1459) was among the early voices arguing that three-headedness was disorderly and inappropriate for the divine.^[20] However, the imagery did find defenders; Saint Teresa of Avila wrote that for the ignorant, the three-faced depiction could be helpful in visualizing the three persons present in one being.^[4]

In the wake of the Reformation and the Council of Trent (1563), the Catholic Church sought to standardize religious imagery.^[20] This led to explicit papal bans:

• Pope Urban VIII (1628): On 11 August 1628, the Pope issued a prohibition against representations of the Trinity as "a figure with one body, three mouths, three noses, and four eyes," ordering such examples to be burned.^[21][4][16]
• Pope Benedict XIV (1745): In his brief Sollicitudini Nostrae, Benedict XIV categorized the three-headed Trinity as a prohibited "monster," distinguishing it from "tolerated" images (such as three identical men) and "approved" images (such as the Gnadenstuhl [de] or "Throne of Mercy").^[21]

In the Russian Empire

In Russia, isolated examples of the three-faced Trinity appeared only in the 18th century, influenced by Catholic art brought by migrants from Ukraine and exiles from Poland.^[22][5] This influence is evident in a 1729 "mixed-hypostasis" icon formerly held at the Novo-Tikhvinsky Convent near Tobolsk^[which?] (now in the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore).^[22]

Russian authorities reacted with hostility, condemning the images as obscene.^[5] In 1767, Catherine the Great reported to the chief procurator of the Holy Synod that a merchant in Kazan had presented her with an icon of the Trinity with three faces and four eyes.^[5] The Empress wrote: "I fear that this might give occasion to senseless icon painters to add to this even more hands and legs, which would be very seductive and similar to Chinese images."^[5]

The Holy Synod condemned the three-faced image and decreed stricter control over icon painters, sending commissions to inspect workshops and markets.^[5] A Synod decree from 11 June 1764, had already previously ordered that "strange and absurd indecencies" in iconography, specifically citing the three-faced, four-eyed Trinity presented to the Empress as resembling "Hellenic gods", be suppressed.^[23] Existing icons of this type were to be removed or repainted.^[23] The Synod also attempted to ban the import of foreign prints featuring the "four-eyed Trinity," such as one found in the possession of a merchant who had purchased it in Pskov, though this measure was not implemented.^[24]

Following the papal bans, the trifacial Trinity largely disappeared from high art but survived in popular devotion and folk art, particularly in Austria, Bavaria, and Switzerland, into the 19th century.^[13] It also remained widely venerated in the Tyrolean Alps during this period.^[16]

The iconography also flourished in Latin America, specifically within the Cusco school of Peru (16th–18th centuries).^[25] In the Spanish American colonies, clergy relied heavily on images for "material pedagogy" to transmit religious knowledge across linguistic barriers.^[4] There was a specific anxiety regarding the standard depiction of the Holy Spirit as a dove; officials feared a return to indigenous idolatry practices of nature worship.^[4] In the 18th century, the "triandric" Trinity (three identical human figures) was officially allowed by the Mexican Inquisition as a safer alternative.^[4] Although the trifacial Trinity did not receive this official endorsement, it nevertheless permeated the region and survives in numerous paintings from New Spain and Peru.^[4]

Some colonial examples were later censored; a trifacial painting attributed to the Colombian artist Gregorio Vásquez de Arce y Ceballos (1638–1711) was rediscovered upon removal of the overpainting that hid original "offending" iconography.^[4]

• Abraham and the Trinity (c. 1270–1280): An illumination in the St John's Psalter (Cambridge) depicts a blue-robed figure with three heads on a single neck visiting Abraham, emphasizing the link between the Old Testament patriarch and the Christian revelation.^[26][27]
• Vision of St. Augustine (c. 1438): A predella piece by Fra Filippo Lippi shows Saint Augustine gazing at a small, sun-like trifacial Trinity with three noses and four eyes.^[28]
• Allegory of Prudence (c. 1550–1565): A painting by Titian uses a secularized form of the tricephalous image to represent the three ages of man (youth, maturity, and old age) associated with a three-headed beast (dog, lion, and wolf).^[29]

• 
  Abraham and the Trinity
• 
  Vision of St. Augustine
• 
  Allegory of Prudence