Franciscan at Home

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Any first impression of The Procession to Calvary by Pieter Bruegel the Elder is telling. I can still remember my initial encounter with it. The scene came across as a chaotic, dizzying whirlwind of activity. Beyond the larger mourning figures in the foreground, I felt a deeper disturbance in the picture, the source of which remained unknown. It seemed to reverberate through the crowd that thronged the landscape, like ripples pushing through the water after a stone has been thrown in.

The sheer number of figures was overwhelming. I wasn’t sure where to look. What were they all doing? There were people milling around in a field, men on horseback, farmers hauling their goods toward the town. I saw a traveler resting with his giant pack, while nearby a man was being arrested. A woman tried to intervene as others scattered with their belongings. I observed the crowd staring at the commotion, the figures turning a blind eye, and still others completely oblivious, going about their daily business. In the background, children play. None of these vignettes, however, seemed to be what this painting was about.

Then it struck me: at the epicenter of the painting was the diminutive personage of Christ, hidden in plain sight, fallen under the weight of the collective sin of mankind. I could hear the crack as he hit the ground. Just behind him, the gaping jaws of the earth opened to swallow all things. This is The Procession to Calvary, the Via Crucis!

A sort of dispersing flow led my gaze to the distant hilltop where the men would be crucified. Encircling the site was a crowd. Among the bystanders, the first Christians gathered as a community around the sacrifice of our Lord. By an ingenious trick of pictorial composition (the similarity in shape), my eye was compelled to jump to the wagon wheel. Following the shaft downward, I arrived at a mound littered with bones: Golgotha.

Here Pieter Bruegel the Elder transports us in a vision to the remote foot of the Cross. We see women weep and pray as St. John consoles our Lady. A thistle, a symbol of original sin, grows in this darkened corner of the world. As viewers, we are both at the periphery and the center of this event—both/and. The name given to this place comes from the Hebrew noun גלגלת (gulgoleth, “skull” or “head”). A skull is prominently displayed; Christ is the head. It is also related to the verb גלל (galal, “to roll”). This rolling action is a key to unlocking the structures and patterns at work in this composition and, by extension, in this event.

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Many moons ago, when I was a young social work student in North Dakota, I was required to take a course called “Indian Studies.” One of the books for the course was titled Black Elk Speaks.

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The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a beautiful dogma of the Church that conveys to the faithful the importance of the Blessed Mother. In 1950, the apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus (The Most Bountiful God) was promulgated by Pope Pius XII. It declared that Mary was assumed into heaven—body and soul—at the end of her earthly life. Many traditions gathered from ancient sources tell us of Mary’s life after the scriptural conclusion of the apostolic age. The whole Church, in both in history and in contemporary times, has perceived the bookends of Mary’s life to be remarkable—a woman born without sin would also be free of the earthly demands of conventional human death. Supported by the patriarchs, the prophets, her Magnificat, the Marian visionaries, bishops, clergy, the lay faithful, and especially her relationship to her Son, Pius XII was moved to establish this dogma to help us know the fullness of Mary ever better.

But how can an artist depict something as mysterious and glorious as an event like this? As in images depicting many other glorious parts of the narrative of salvation, an artist is called to stretch the imagination, to conceive of a design that amplifies our meditation instead of bringing it “down to earth.” Certainly, composing a simple, factual scene of a woman flying into the sky would be insufficient. The Assumption by Masolino is an image that does more than show a literal historical event. It is painted in the International Gothic style—a post-Medieval, pre-Renaissance mix of realism and imaginative idealism. In art, realism depicts what the neutral eye naturally sees, whereas idealism is a vision of what the mind would like to see based on invisible ideas, usually something better than what we find when looking at the world. Realism and idealism are found throughout the history of art in both secular and religious images. Artists who create sacred art often use forms that are “more than real” in order to convey the mysteries of our faith. Masolino is one of those artists.

“The option or love of preference for the poor . . . is an option, or a special form of primacy in the exercise of Christian charity, to which the whole tradition of the Church bears witness. It affects the life of each Christian inasmuch as he or she seeks to imitate the life of Christ, but it applies equally to our social responsibilities and hence to our manner of living, and to the logical decisions to be made concerning the ownership and use of goods” — St. John Paul II[1]

Notes

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The Ghent Altarpiece, also known by the title The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, is one of the most famous images in art history. The additional title is important as a signal to the viewer to pay close attention to where the image leads us through an evocation of the narrative of salvation.

Jan van Eyck was born in the fourteenth century in present-day Belgium and settled in the city of Bruges, where he accomplished his major works during the Northern Renaissance. He and his artist brother Hubert began this altarpiece together in the 1420s, but an inscription on the original frame notes that it was finished by the “second best artist,” that being Jan van Eyck. Jan, however, was no minor artist. In fact, he was the towering figure in the painting world of the Early Northern Renaissance, with this altarpiece for St. Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium included among his many impressive works.

The altarpiece is a polyptych—a set of individual painted panels, framed and hinged together so as to be foldable and able to be reconfigured. When the wings are closed, different images can be seen, including a painting of the Annunciation. The view we see here is a typical configuration, showing major elements with rich significance. It is also important to note that the richness extends to the medium of the paint. While previous generations used egg tempera or water-based fresco, van Eyck was an early innovator of oil as a medium, which imparts a depth of color and luminosity not found in tempera or fresco. It would take decades before oil was adopted by the painters of the Italian Renaissance, and today oil still reigns as queen of all painting media.

The sections of the altarpiece can be understood as an outside-of-time, typological concert of figures and scenes set into two registers or rows of panels, upper and lower. If we begin with the presence of downcast Adam and Eve, we can recognize the Fall of our first parents. Their presence here marks the beginning of the narrative of salvation. We also understand that Jesus is the new Adam who accomplishes our salvation. This joins Adam and Jesus in a typological relationship—a once-perfect man causes our downfall; a divine man restores us. Just above Adam and Eve, we notice small narratives from Genesis: the sacrifices of brothers Abel and Cain and the murder of Abel by Cain. Both of these events typologically prefigure Jesus in the Paschal Mystery as the perfect sacrifice and the innocent victim.

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“What are those five naked boys doing in my Holy Family?”[1] Thus exclaims Agnolo Doni in Irving Stone’s novel The Agony and the Ecstasy upon seeing the tondo (round painting) he had commissioned from Michelangelo. Whether or not the real Agnolo Doni found the picture surprising in 1509, viewers today may well find the inclusion of such background figures strange.

The presence of five nude youths is not the only puzzling thing about the Doni Tondo. The arrangement of the principal figures is most unusual. Although the Virgin Mary being seated on the ground is a recognized type, known as the “Madonna of Humility,” here she has bare, muscular arms, and her gesture is vigorous, even athletic. St. Joseph sits behind and above Mary—perhaps on a low stool or a rock, but the support remains mysterious—with his knees framing the Virgin. Mary has just lifted Jesus up and is releasing her hold as Joseph firmly grasps the child.

In paintings as in parables, the strange elements can serve as keys to interpretation. The multiple puzzling features of Michelangelo’s tondo, far from discouraging us, guide us in our search for the picture’s meaning.

Why is Joseph seated higher than Mary? Well, he is clearly the head of the family. Perhaps that is all that his position in the painting is meant to suggest. With this thought in mind, let us continue looking.

No other known depiction of the Holy Family shows Mary sitting between Joseph’s knees. Elsewhere in art, this position alludes to a parent-child relationship, as in Masaccio’s Madonna and Child with Saint Anne in the Uffizi Gallery, or Michelangelo’s own Bruges Madonna. Of course, Joseph is not Mary’s father; yet, the arrangement insists on Mary’s role as a daughter. Mary was the daughter of St. Joachim, but nothing in the painting suggests that the man depicted is Joachim rather than Joseph. His bald crown and white beard, and his blue tunic and orange cloak, are all common attributes of St. Joseph in Renaissance art. The puzzle remains. Is there anyone else to whom Mary is a daughter and with whom this figure of Joseph can be associated?

Mary is, through adoption in Christ, a daughter to God. We see St. Joseph, head of the Holy Family and foster father of Jesus, but Michelangelo strongly suggests that, at the same time, we also think of God the Father. In this light, we can find a deeper meaning in the placement of Joseph’s head at the top of the circle. Joseph is the head of the Holy Family, but all paternity takes its name from the fatherhood of God (Eph 3:14–15). Moreover, as the foster father of Jesus, Joseph acts in loco parentis toward the Son of God. Notice that the heads of Jesus and Joseph are on the same level at the summit of the painting, pointing to the fact that Jesus is consubstantial with, and hence equal to, the Father.