Photo of the Day: Virgin Mary and Angels

I took the photo of these statues in the yard next to St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church in Demarest, N.J., a few towns away from where I live.

Quote of the Day (Luke, on Mary, ‘Handmaid of the Lord’)

“In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, ‘Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ But Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?’ And the angel said to her in reply, ‘The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible for God.” Mary said, ‘Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.’ ” Luke 1: 26-38

Nobody else in the human race has ever been given the great honor and responsibility accorded Mary, but all of us, even the humblest, are called to give honor to God. Among the examples of this—not just in the United States, but around the world—are the artisans who have testified to their faith through their work.

Everyone knows the extraordinary examples of this in the Vatican, but I think that I and many of my fellow Catholics take for granted the many—and, more frequently than not, all but anonymous—architects, painters, sculptors, and stained-glass makers who have made even the ordinary parish churches little jewel boxes. I took the photo accompanying this post, for instance, a couple of years ago, while on vacation, in Staunton, Va., the birthplace of President Woodrow Wilson and home of the Blackfriars Playhouse. This particular Madonna-and-Child statue is just outside St. Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic Church. You can multiply examples of these around the country.

This Day in Art History (Caravaggio Gains 1st Public Commission)

July 23, 1599—A 28-year-old painter with a stormy personal life, Michangelo Merisi a Caravaggio (better known to history as simply Caravaggio), gained his first public commission: chapel side-panels depicting dramatic events in the life of St. Matthew.

The Italian Baroque master was intensely religious, and well he might be: he got into so many serious scrapes with the law that sometimes, it seemed, only serious divine intervention could extricate him.

In the 1980s, Todd Rundgren released the puckishly titled The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect. Caravaggio knew all about this syndrome, from first to last.

Even before his St. Matthew commission, the painter’s explosive temper led to trouble. In 1592, with his father dead for a decade and his mother having just recently passed on, he was so boiling over with hurt and grievances that he had to flee Milan—certain “violent quarrels” and the wounding of a police officer had made him a marked man.

Even after his St. Matthew commission brought him recognition and work, Caravaggio was in hot water continually. From 1600 to 1606, he went to trial at least 11 times, for crimes that included assault, libel and murder. 

(A good thing that none of those charges related to sexual orientation: the painter is now assumed to be gay or bisexual, which, if proven in court, would have been a capital offense in the Italy of his time.)

An artist of such turbulent emotion was made for drama, and that element winds up in his paintings time and again.

It wasn’t as if such moments were unknown in Italian religious painting before—Leonardo’s The Last Supper, for instance, deals with the moment when Christ has just announced that one of his Apostles will betray him. 

But Caravaggio’s startling realism brought the viewer into the moment depicted on canvass in a manner seldom if ever seen before.

It started with chiaroscuro—his use of light and dark elements for dramatic contrast. You can see it at work in one of his panels for that first commission, The Calling of St. Matthew, where the dark world of tax collector Levi (the apostle’s name before his ministry) is illuminated suddenly from the right by the entrance of Christ and St. Peter. 

The tax collector, surrounded by four assistants, is startled to see Christ’s outstretched hand. He points to himself as if to say, “You mean me?”

Ironically, though the painter’s namesake and great forebear Michelangelo, inspired by ancient artists, had focused on the human body, his successors had gotten away from that. Caravaggio brought a renewed interest in bodily realism. 

He dispensed with the lengthy preparation that had become increasingly common, opting instead for working quickly and directly from the subject with his works on oils.

The Calling of St. Matthew and its great companion piece, The Martyrdom of St. Matthew (shown in the image accompanying this post), were created for the Contarelli chapel in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. The chapel had been built with funds left over by the man who gave his name to it, the French Cardinal Matteo Contarelli.

Caravaggio was paid for the two paintings in 1600, but his work in the chapel wasn’t over. 

When a statue by another artist of St. Matthew and an angel was rejected, Caravaggio was approached about filling the space with another oil on campus. He complied, but his patrons must have been picky, because they rejected his, too.

No matter. Caravaggio might have had his faults, but unlike Leonardo, once he received a commission, despite his personal troubles, he followed through on the assignment. He completed his second try at the altarpiece swiftly, being paid on September 22, 1602, more than three years after his first commission.

Caravaggio’s work was rapturously welcomed by his patrons, the common people who passed through the churches where they were housed, and other artists, who were mightily influenced by his work. Unfortunately the painter, forever on the run, had little time to enjoy his acclaim.

In May 1606, Caravaggio killed a man in a brawl arising from, of all things, a game of royal tennis. At one point, he had sought refuge in Malta, where yet another quarrel with a senior knight made him a desperately hunted man.

There is a painting of Pope Paul V that has been attributed to Caravaggio. The pontiff must have liked it, and perhaps the artist as well, because he was ready to extend a pardon to the beleaguered Caravaggio. Caravaggio was on his way back to the Eternal City when he caught fever and died on the beach at Port'Ercole in Tuscany on July 18, 1610, not even 40 yet.

Quote of the Day (The Council of Trent, on Religious Imagery)

“And the bishops shall carefully teach this,-that, by means of the histories of the mysteries of our Redemption, portrayed by paintings or other representations, the people is instructed, and confirmed in (the habit of) remembering, and continually revolving in mind the articles of faith; as also that great profit is derived from all sacred images, not only because the people are thereby admonished of the benefits and gifts bestowed upon them by Christ, but also because the miracles which God has performed by means of the saints, and their salutary examples, are set before the eyes of the faithful; that so they may give God thanks for those things; may order their own lives and manners in imitation of the saints; and may be excited to adore and love God, and to cultivate piety. But if any one shall teach, or entertain sentiments, contrary to these decrees; let him be anathema.

And if any abuses have crept in amongst these holy and salutary observances, the holy Synod ardently desires that they be utterly abolished; in such wise that no images, (suggestive) of false doctrine, and furnishing occasion of dangerous error to the uneducated, be set up. And if at times, when expedient for the unlettered people; it happen that the facts and narratives of sacred Scripture are portrayed and represented; the people shall be taught, that not thereby is the Divinity represented, as though it could be seen by the eyes of the body, or be portrayed by colours or figures.” —Decretum de invocatione, veneratione, et reliquiis Sanctorum, et sacris imaginibus (Decree On the Invocation, Veneration, and Relics, of Saints, and on Sacred Images), Council of Trent, December 3, 1563

(As Eamon Duffy noted in his papal history Saints and Sinners, the Council of Trent “came a generation too late, a generation during which the split in the Church had widened and hardened.” Yet the Council, which lasted through five pontificates and nearly 20 years, off and on, was crucial in the Roman Catholic Church’s Counter-Reformation—its attempt to halt the Protestant Reformation in its tracks and, wherever possible, win back the hearts and minds of people and their rulers. It clearly defined the major issues separating the Church from the Protestant movement, including justification, transubstantiation, the sacraments, and purgatory. As the session drew to a close, it rendered what I believe was particularly important service to the history of European culture with its decree on religious imagery.

Among the matters dividing Protestants from Catholics was religious art. At the height of the Renaissance, artists such as Michelangelo, powerfully influenced by “rediscovered” art from ancient Greece and Rome, had increasingly emphasized the human body, including through nudity. That greater stress prompted an outcry that this art was secular, even pagan, violating sanctions against worshipping statues dating back to Deuteronomy 5:9. Increasingly, Protestant leaders removed such images from their own houses of worship.

Nowadays, art historians are wont to lament that the post-conciliar period resulted in the removal of genital nudity from religious art. But the alternative—the removal of all religious art—was far worse. By inducing artists to modify those elements that gave rise to charges of superstition, the Council of Trent managed to defang additional opposition. At least now, the architects, sculptors and painters who would follow in the Baroque Era—including Bernini and El Greco--could relax in the knowledge that they still had livelihoods.

As a blogger, I can’t be anything but grateful for the democratization of the written word fostered by the Reformation. But I also don’t see why artists can’t trace, with all the skills God gave them, the ways of the Lord to humanity, or celebrate the beauty of His creation. Whether touring a cathedral or even a smaller house of worship such as my own St. Cecilia’s Church in Englewood, NJ, Catholics can take pride in contributing so much of the great splendor of Western art.

The leaders of the Council of Trent were correct to emphasize the instructional function of religious art; over the years, it fostered an appreciation for narrative and the sense that God could be found everywhere—what theologian David Tracy and sociologist-novelist Andrew Greeley have termed “the sacramental imagination.”)