Dib Moussa  

Dlepta (Lebanon), 1743-1826

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Moussa Dib had been the student of Boutros Kobressi and studied at the Maronite College in Rome. He took charge of the representation of painting more than painting itself. He developed his own style to express the cultural complexity of the environment in which he lived. For him, painting was a way of asking himself questions. He was therefore a painter, because he reflected what he had understood and perceived of the history of painting. Some texts and testimonials indicate his stubbornness in the pursuit of his pictorial work, his violent taste for painting, but also the severe opinion of an entourage where painting did not exist, and which did not exist for painting.

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The duties of the clerical society to which Moussa Dib belonged were not strictly outlined. He passed the torch to his nephew, Kenaan Dib. If naive painting merged with the naivety of painting, it would be shared by all the great painters, and would become the most secret aspect of their art, the same sort of secret as love, which is to trust totally and naively. But living from the dream of painting is as difficult as living from painting. For Moussa Dib, the “clerical diversion” was the only possible path.

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There has not yet been any research on the history of Maronite religious painting, as well as that of other communities. The rigidity of the understanding of the Lebanese cultural model is transitory here, and is the only way to immobilize and to analyse its complex history. The link between the history of Maronite painting and the history of form and representation is enriched by its relationship to language, by the constitution of grammar books and dictionaries, by research and intellectual speculation, and also by the way of life in radically different or opposite societies.

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The history of form and representation in Maronite religious painting encompasses the Oriental pictorial tradition as well as the progressive influence of Western representation. It is a result of an addition of creaters, rather than a continuous or generalised movement of cultural history.

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In 1777 Moussa Dib was made Father Superior of the Saydet El Hakle monastery, where he succeeded his uncle, Boutros Dib. The following year, he painted a portrait of Hindyé Ajami. He was decommissioned from his post by Patriarch Helou in 1816, and then reinstated from 1818 until his death in 1826. By these times, a feud with Bkerké had erupted, but the relationship between sacred and profane painting remained.