A long post, titled:
'So, I illustrated the entire Summa Theologica'
Hello. I have been somewhat absent from posting here since I released my last book, at the start of December.
Well, I have a great reason for this. In conjunction with Ave Maria Press and a new book they released, I spent the last few months illustrating the entire structure of the Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas. If you're unfamiliar, that's a 1200s mega-work of theology and philosophy, easily one of the most influential ever.
It’s in my shop as a large print here. I would like to show you and tell you about it in this post.
First, the premise.
I was contacted by Ave Maria press about a new book they were publishing. This was months before they released it. It’s out now - they made this graphic to promote it for Thomas Aquinas’ feast day (January 28th). I like the little sculpture of him:
The concept we started with was: this book walks you entirely through the structure of the Summa Theologica. Perhaps we could visualize this structure, as a large cathedral the viewer would move through.
This would be somewhat like the large liturgical calendar I illustrated - but different. The calendar is obviously cyclical, this would be one path through one of the most influential (and large) theological works of all time. Obviously, I read the book (twice). It's great, I really recommend it.
I had wanted to expand further into the concept map / heavily illustrated / informationally dense theological imagery - I consider it one of my specialties, but for something like this, I would be unable to do so alone. I’m simply not academically equipped to take on something so official (I do some book learning but I mostly draw “the pictures”).
So, here, I was basically able to be downstream of the expertise of Cajetan Cuddy, O.P. (Order of Preachers). His scholarly biography is really world class (my opinion, they didn’t make me say this or anything) - he’s General Editor of the Encyclopedia of Catholic Theology, and Professor of Dogmatic and Moral Theology at the Dominican House of Studies.
Official scholar and priest, paired with local slightly strange artist. We’re really operating in the 1400s Tuscan city-state Renaissance milieu here, if I do say so myself.
Let’s take a look at the result.
On this full image, you can see that it's broken up into a few sections, following the structure of the Summa Theologica. The bottom layer (orange) is the introduction, then the yellow is part one, the blue is part two, and the red in the center is part three. There's also a key in the middle:
A book reads front to back, it’s naturally linear - but visualizing the structure presented a small challenge. To be overly succinct, section one is about God, section two is (basically) about man, and then section three is about Christ. Visually, following the input of Father Cuddy’s book, I wanted section three (Christ) between the first two (God and Man), for obvious reasons.
(These above and below details are some of my favorites. I was especially pleased with the window glow above - I used the pattern from a real window at the church where Aquinas is buried - Church of the Jacobins in Toulouse, France).
Unguided, an image might naturally be read up or down - but then section three, Christ, wouldn't be between God and Man. I felt that a spiral leading to the center, or a snaking back and forth path for the viewer to follow, would also confusing. So, I just laid it out as a real cathedral, with an entrance - you can see that here, with some first floor details:
Each section has many subsections. One of the things I enjoy most is taking dense networks of information and making them visual. Really, “illustration” is just making information visual, in my opinion. Here’s a few examples of that:
One of my favorite examples is this section below. On the print, this is just a few inches by a few inches. This is a pretty complicated web: there are two types of act (first and second) and they correspond to the two kinds of evil, because... well, you can see it all here:
This is probably one of the most rewarding things I've worked on, as I had to weave all this information into my brain and then put it back together visually. My son asked me what "prudence" was in the car and I just told him the definition straight from the Summa - very satisfying. That’s the first image here:
Obviously I have a lot to say about this and we're just launching here so, we’ll wrap this up now and revisit it later: It's on sale in my shop right now. It's big - if you've seen the calendar I did, it's the same size (two feet by three feet). They're very high quality - that's here.
If you place an order now, just a note: I'm starting to ship these in a week. I need to see one more thing from the printer to ensure the colors are perfect, and there’s so much text that I need one more person from my team (possibly… the baby) to look at it before I start shipping. Here's that an image of that calendar, just so you can see - this print is the same size:
Also, I genuinely recommend the book this work is based on. If you're on "this part" of Substack, read all this, or enjoy my work at all, the odds that you would really be into this are basically 100%. It easily goes through the entire Summa, I got a lot out of it. It's great.
Here it is linked on their site. As a practical testimonial, after reading it, I essentially had no questions to ask before starting out on this project - everything I needed was in there and totally clear. I just really enjoyed reading it a lot.
Thank you for reading my brief tale and looking at my images. it's been a few weeks of not sleeping so I'm going to make some coffee and... go look at the sun? Haven't seen that in a while. One more link roundup:
The print, framed or unframed, in my shop
A post on the previous large theological image I made: a liturgical calendar (these two go together, in a way). That link is to substack, where I wrote... a lot - a few articles. It's also in a tumblr post here.
And the book this is all adapted from: ‘The Summa Illuminated: A Guide to St. Thomas Aquinas's Masterpiece’, on the publisher’s site, or on Amazon.
Thanks for looking at my stuff. Hope your winter has been unfolding well.
