Franciscan at Home

The Gospel tells us clearly that Jesus Christ is both true God and true Man. Meditating on this Mystery, the Fathers of the Church concluded that the Blessed Virgin Mary must in some sense be Mother of God, and from the time of Origen (185-254 AD), the Virgin Mary was known as ‘theotokos’ or ‘God Bearer.’
In 429 this title was challenged by Nestorius, who held that Mary was the mother only of Christ’s humanity, and he coined the term ‘Christotokos’ or ‘Christ Bearer’ to describe her role in salvation history. Led by St Cyril of Alexandria, the Councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451) rejected the teaching of Nestorius, pointing out that Christ’s human and divine natures were both fully present as a hypostatic union in the one Person of Christ. As mother of Jesus, Mary was therefore mother not only of Christ’s human nature, but also in a real sense of his divine nature. The Virgin’s title of ‘theotokos’ has never subsequently been theologically disputed.
In the Latin Church, the title was translated from the Greek as ‘Dei Genetrix’, ‘Mother of god’, and in this issue we will examine the way in which the great Dutch painter, Rembrandt, interpreted the idea of Mary as ‘ Mother of God’. The painting to be studied is his Holy Family, made in 1645, and presently hanging in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

Here is a downloadable worksheet that may be photocopied for catechetical purposes.

While one often learns about a person’s character from letters with friends and biographies written by contemporaries, much of Caravaggio’s life is known only from police records. Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio after his small Italian birthplace, was born a week before the naval Battle of Lepanto in 1571 when Muslim invaders were driven out of Christendom. Orphaned by age 13, when the Bubonic Plague had claimed every member of his family, he became a wanderer on the streets, searching for purpose. The painter traded his fair share of threats and insults, smashed plates in restaurants, and often found himself in a squabble with gangs and vagabonds he encountered. Some say the man slept in his clothes with a dagger at hand. Yet he clearly possessed a fascination with the transcendent, the Christian mystery in particular, as seen in his paintings depicting the life of Christ and his apostles. The sacred and the profane shared an intimate dance in Caravaggio’s life and in his artwork.

The Entombment of Christ was originally painted as the altarpiece of the Chiesa Nuova, St. Philip Neri's church in Rome. This 17th century masterpiece serves as a dramatic depiction of human grief and sorrow, yet an equally poignant reminder of human hope in everlasting life. Notice that there is no background, no landscape or cityscape to catch your eye, but rather the artist longs to draw you into the scene at the front, using a type of spotlight effect. It seems that Caravaggio is depicting on canvas through his tenebroso what the evangelist St. John writes so eloquently: “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it” (1:5).

Use the questions and comments on these two pages as a study guide of The Agony in the Garden by Mantegna.

Suggested uses: First Communion, First Confession, Lent, Exploring the Mass, Confirmation, RCIC

1. Find the three groups of people (and angels) and describe what they are doing.

What are the Angels doing?

What are the Apostles doing?

What are the Roman soldiers doing?

Andrea Mantegna painted ‘The Agony in the Garden’ on a wood panel using egg tempera (around 1458-1460), and it measures 25” by 32” (63 x80 cms). It is, therefore, too large to be part of a predella and too small to be an altarpiece, so it is most likely that it was painted for private devotion. Mantegna’s brother-in-law, Giovanni Bellini, painted an ‘Agony in the Garden’ in 1465, and the two paintings hang on the same wall of Room 62 in the National Gallery in London.
All his life Mantegna was interested in rocks and ruins and then studied them intensively. This fascination is manifested in the structure of the painting. Christ is shown centrally, kneeling in prayer on a rock formation which clearly represents and altar. This tells us that the episode in the Garden of Gethsemane is part of the Passover sacrifice which begins in the Upper Room and continues towards Calvary on the morrow.

In this issue of The Sower, Learning through Art provides work sheets to help subscribers analyze and meditate upon the "Mond Crucifixion" by Raphael. In a particular way, Learning through Art focuses on how the painting illustrates the Mass as much as it does the Crucifixion. Highlighting its Contrasts and Harmony, Caroline Farey shows how the painting depicts Time and Eternity, Death and Life, Heaven and Earth.

Painted in 1503, when Raphael was only twenty years old, this work could easily be mistaken for one by Raphael’s master, Perugino. The painting, however, is signed and dated at the foot of the Cross, so the provenance is certain. It was made as an altarpiece for a side chapel dedicated to St. Jerome in the Church of San Domanico, Citta di Castello, in Tuscany. The stone frame for the painting is still in place. Below it, the Predella comprised three paintings of episodes in the life of St. Jerome, but these have also been removed, though two survived.

Raphael depicts the moment of Christ’s death on the Cross. Two angels with communion chalices collect the blood gushing from the wounds in the Saviour’s hands and side. Beneath the Cross the Virgin and St John are shown standing, while the two penitents, St. Jerome and St. Mary Magdalene, are kneeling.

St. Jerome carries a stone in his right hand with which to beat his bare breast in mortification. The Cross and the human figures are set on bare earth, but further back there is life-giving water, and vegetation covers the ground, ground which merges gently with the heavenly horizon. Above the Cross, the sun and a darkened moon attest to the cosmic significance of the event being enacted below.

This is a richly symbolic painting, the central theme of which is the Eucharist. Notice first the Cross on which the Saviour hangs. This extends from top to bottom of the painting and signifies that only through the Cross may earth and heaven be reunited.

It is the time of the year when many children are making their first Holy Communion. Here is a scene of Christ’s last supper, that could enrich any final session or retreat day to help children and parents enter a little more deeply into the ‘sacred mysteries’ of the Mass.

It helps greatly to suggest that the participants look carefully at the picture while the gospel is read. Through the reading of the Scripture passage one can locate many details.

he artist known as ‘Ghirlandaio’ is properly called Domenico di Tommaso Bigordi, born in Florence in 1449 in the midst of the great century of Florentine artists. His father had a jewellery business and Domenico, as far as we know, began working for his father as a goldsmith. His nickname of Ghirlandaio, meaning the "Garland- maker", came from his or his father’s speciality, namely, the making of silver or gold garlands favoured by the young women of Florence.

Some sources speak of the young Ghirlandaio drawing portraits of the people who passed by his father’s shop. He became apprenticed to a Florentine painter and soon made a name for himself, later taking two of his brothers into his own studio. He was called to Rome to work on the Sistine chapel along with Perugino, a commission which further enhanced his reputation. Ghirlandaio married and had children but died of a fever at the early age of 45 in 1494.

This painting by Michael O’Brien, a modern day Canadian writer and painter, is one that deserves our time and meditation. It is a painting in which the perspective is one of particular importance.

In our catechesis, this painting can be used especially well with children so that they can see the greatness of the protection of Archangel Michael. For children, their small lives can seem so easily to be overwhelmed by events outside of their control, and the devil and the raging waves of the sea graphically depict this. But the comparative size and evident protecting power of St Michael is deeply reassuring.

There are a number of passages from the Scriptures which could be used alongside a catechesis using this painting. From the Old Testament we have the story of Jonah who is caught in a great storm and is thrown into the waves, from which God saves him and brings him safely to land (Jon 1:4-17). Perhaps the passage that springs most immediately to mind, though, is from the Gospels, where the disciples are caught in a storm and fear for their lives (see Matt.8:23-27, Mk.4:36-41, Lk8:22-25). In this episode it is clear that the disciples in the boat are also an image of the Church in every age, crying out for assistance as waves of tribulation and fury beat down upon them. St Matthew, in fact, in his telling of this episode, has the disciples calling out ‘Save us, Lord!’, an echo of the kyrie elesion in the liturgy we sing each Sunday.