Franciscan at Home

Pentecost, by the artist El Greco (c. 1597), is one of the most extreme images of an event in Scripture. What was the convergence of history, culture, and personality that led to El Greco’s image of the descent of the Holy Spirit as described in the Acts of the Apostles?

Because of the pandemic, instead of working directly with children, many parish catechists are helping parents gain confidence in preparing their children for sacraments without traditional classes. I believe this new process can ennoble families to better assume their role in society.

“Ennoble,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, means to “make noble or elevate.” (“Ennoble,” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ennoble.) Kings and queens elevate or “ennoble” a “commoner” to the status of “noble.” One cannot ennoble himself. He receives his nobility either through family inheritance, marriage, or as a gift bestowed by the proper authority.

As Catholics, our ennoblement begins at Baptism when we become members of God’s kingdom family with Christ as King. The liturgical rite itself is an ennobling gift received from the Church. The sacramental signs of candle and flame, water, oil, and white garment are gifts. So are the words of Sacred Scripture, the sign of the cross, and the renewal of baptismal promises.

At the baptism of our youngest grandchild, obligatory facemasks could not diminish the solemn dignity embodied by each member of baby Oliver’s family as we witnessed his two oldest siblings step up as godparents. Three generations were united by word and creed as we left the earthly realm of time and space to enter into the sacred liturgy and Oliver became a child of the King.

We could discuss in detail the ennobling qualities we receive in each of the Church’s sacraments, but let’s turn our attention instead toward ennobling practices Catholics can receive from the Church and adapt to family life.

In this article, we reflect on the painting, Christ Appearing to His Mother, by Juan de Flandes, Netherlandish ca. 1496.

There is a tradition from the thirteenth century of Jesus appearing to his mother after the Resurrection.[1] It is not mentioned in the New Testament, but as devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mother increased, her absence in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances raised the question. Is it likely that Jesus would have visited his mother, with whom he lived, as far as we can know, for all but the last three years of his life?  And is it possible that the Gospel writers might not have chosen to mention such a filial, poignant and intimate meeting even if they knew about it? 

In this painting, the artist imagines Jesus going to meet his mother immediately after he has risen from the dead. In the Gospel accounts we are told of Mary standing at the foot of the Cross, that Jesus gave John to his mother and John, “from that hour . . . took her to his own home” (Jn 19:27). Without doubt, Mary would have gone to John’s home and “kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Lk 2:19).

In and with Mary, our Holy Mother the Church has done the same, and her pondering has produced traditions and images that are not in the Scriptures, but which can help us appreciate more fully the depths of the immense mystery of our salvation.

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Piero di Cosimo is one of the most interesting artists of the Renaissance. His biographer was Giorgio Vasari, the contemporary of Michelangelo who is considered to be the first art historian. Vasari collected stories about the most famous and popular artists from the Renaissance, and his book, The Lives of the Artists, became a bestseller. His narratives are full of personal remarks, perhaps based on hearsay and his own judgment, on the character of both the art and artists themselves. With that as the basis, we come to know Piero di Cosimo as a true eccentric. He had unusual habits and phobias that often kept him in seclusion. According to Vasari, he was deathly afraid of thunderstorms and fire, lived on a diet of hard-boiled eggs, and never cleaned his studio. He also had a deep love of nature, which usually showed in his painting of trees, rocks, animals, and the natural world. Despite his apparent eccentricities (if Vasari’s narrative is true), Piero accomplished a remarkable body of work, including this beautiful scene of the Nativity.

The Nativity with the Infant St. John is a tondo painting—one that is circular in shape, which was popularized in the Renaissance. While the subjects varied, the tondo sometimes functioned as a gift to celebrate a successful birth, called a desco da parto or “birth tray.” During the postpartum period a mother would receive limited guests, usually only females and family, and gifts and refreshment would be served from such an image framed and functioning as a tray. But the practical function was ritualistic only at first; later, the object would be hung as a framed work of art. A repeating iconographic subject for such a desco da parto was the birth of a saint, or as in the case here, the Nativity of Our Lord.

It is important to consider that the circular image would offer the artist the opportunity (or challenge) to compose “in the round.” If we consider the rose window in the Gothic Period as an immensely successful expression of circular composing, the relative flatness of a window permits the designer to think largely in two dimensions. But when an artist must conceive of the wholeness of three dimensions, the challenge increases. In a rose window, the form is of a flower or a wheel—petals or spokes radiating outward from a center ovule or hub. But in a painting of a landscape with human figures, how can an artist make a convincing picture and still get the sense that the circle’s form is important to the image and the image is important to the circle?

Circles are “perfect”; circles have no beginning or end—they are continuous with no parts or characteristics that offer differences, such as the corners found in squares or triangles, two other basic geometric forms. In that sense, circles are inscrutable. This is a good reason to symbolically associate circles with perfection and unity. One might also extend that comparison to God, who is a unity of pure being even in the perfect familial unity of the Trinity—a beautiful and mysterious paradox. In visual art, the circle is difficult as a basis for composition because there are no inherent parts to work with in a perfect circle—no horizontal and vertical edges, no corners or gravity. Any definition like up and down or side to side resists interpretation because the eye remains focused on the singularity of circularity as the dominant expression.

So Piero di Cosimo was given this commission and decided on the subject of the Nativity. When we study the painting, we can ask: what is this image about? What does the composition reveal? What did Piero want us to think as we contemplate its iconography?

Who prepared the young heart and mind of Mary to respond to God in humble faith with a fiat, her yes to the Archangel Gabriel? Where did Mary, the Mother of God, learn to listen attentively to God’s word?  

The beautiful painting The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, by Italian artist Andrea di Bartolo in the first decade of the fifteenth century, offers insight into Mary’s life through one pivotal moment in her youth. This event, of course, is known largely from early apocryphal writings. In this masterpiece, the Sienese artist brings to life, in vivid detail, the hidden moment that prepared Mary to take her unique place in God’s plan of salvation. Striking in its simplicity and beauty, this image draws us into the mystery of Mary’s life, a life that always leads to her divine Son, Jesus.

Full of Grace

“Hail Mary, full of grace!” These words of the Archangel Gabriel spoken at the Annunciation are familiar words of Christian prayer. They teach us an important truth about the Mother of God. Long before the Annunciation, Mary was filled with grace. From the moment of her Immaculate Conception, Mary was preserved from the stain of original sin. She was “full of grace” from her conception in the womb of St. Anne to her glorious assumption into heaven.  

Andrea di Bartolo was commissioned to paint a large altarpiece dedicated to scenes from the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This panel was one of three small panels that depicted the domestic church in which Mary was raised. Two other panels show the birth of Mary and the generosity of her parents, St. Joachim and St. Anne, in their almsgiving and care of the poor. In this scene, the artist shows Mary at her presentation in the temple when she was consecrated to God within the devotion and faith of her family.

The Family of Mary

“The family is the basic cell of society. It is the cradle of life and love, the place in which the individual ‘is born’ and ‘grows.’”[1] These words of St. John Paul II remind us that the family has a fundamental and formative role, both in society and in the life of each person. This is true of every Christian, and it is exemplified in a special way in the life of Mary.

The artist Hieronymus Bosch is a mystery of Art History. His role in the Northern Renaissance has made him a curiosity who has been admired, copied, and perhaps disdained as a madman. His paintings are fantastical always and religious usually, but religious in a unique, sometimes troubling and psychologically dark manner. He left no written documents or letters that might explain his ideas about painting, but he is mentioned in the archives of the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady, a Netherlandish religious confraternity. His father was an artist, as were three of his brothers. He rarely dated his paintings and there has been endless speculation about his work, his life, and the meanings of his paintings. However, his work is full of intense expressions of the urgency of the human condition, of which Death and the Miser is an exceptional example.

While most of Bosch’s famous works include many figures crowded into strange environments, this scene of the miser’s bedroom is focused on one person, the man who has lived a life of greed. He has come to the last moments of his life; the final battle for his soul is happening. We are given an opportunity to watch his life unfold in a simultaneous narrative.

In the foreground, we see him in the fullness of life depositing money into a lockable chest, the keys for which are hanging from his waist. Also hanging from his waist and passing through his hand is a rosary. This indicates a moral conflict: praying and hoarding wealth do not go hand in hand except in the disordered mind of the miser. The room includes other attributes of worldly prestige and gain such as armor and documents sealed in wax (likely contracts or loan documents). Remember that usury was, and is, the sin of lending money at exorbitant rates of interest, a likely source of income for this miser. In the chest a demon holds open the bag for the coins. Indeed, demons are everywhere in the room, lurking around and poking their heads from behind a curtain, from under the chest and from over the canopy. Above the canopy is a vaulted passageway and the bed seems to be receding into a void of darkness. Death itself, with the face of a skull, enters through the door with an arrow. In the bed the miser, emaciated with a sickly color, is at the end. It is time to for him to decide: repentance or damnation. Salvation hangs in the balance! Which will it be?

“We are a people of the Resurrection.”
These words of St. Augustine, echoed in more recent times by St. John Paul II, call us to live in the hope and joy of Christ’s victory over death. Even in times of suffering, spiritual aridity, or simply the humdrum of everyday life, we have the glorious light of truth to live by: Jesus has redeemed us through his Passion, and we will live forever.

The icon of the Resurrection helps unfold the unfathomable mystery of Christ’s victory over death. In the Eastern tradition, the icon of the Resurrection (in Greek Anastasis) is called the Icon of the Descent, which may at first not seem logical. If we are celebrating Jesus having risen from the dead, why look at his descent to the dead?

Certainly, in the Western tradition we are accustomed to images of Christ triumphantly stepping up out of the tomb, or rising above the astonished guards in a burst of light. These images fit in well with our understanding of the narrative. So then why the Descent?

One simple explanation is this: the exact moment of Christ’s Resurrection is not recorded in Scripture. There were in fact no eyewitnesses; it was an event hidden from human senses. Whereas, precise and numerous details of Jesus’ crucifixion are recorded by the Gospel writers, the details of his Resurrection are not.
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As Jesus victoriously steps over the destroyed gate of hell, he pulls Adam and Eve from their tombs by the wrists; they were the first to sin and now are the first to be brought from the depths of the underworld. As the iconographer Fr. Tomas Labanic describes the two, “They are represented as old because the human race is old. They are clothed because they still represent their state of sin in paradise, in which they recognized they were naked after committing the sin, and went to cover themselves.”

Journeying with the Holy Family

In the difficult journeys of human life, we must hope for a way to find consolation amid hardships. That means something different than a weekend away from the workplace or a summer vacation at the beach. The true rest we seek is that which is provided only from a source that transcends nature and suspends time and space, even if for a brief moment. That source is the supernatural grace of God.

In the earthly journey of Jesus, a particularly harsh event took place very early in life, which challenged Mary his mother and St. Joseph.

In 1597, Michelangelo da Merisi da Caravaggio, or simply Caravaggio, painted The Rest on the Flight to Egypt. Images that show events on the journey are non-canonical; the Scriptures do not recount specifics of the travels of the Holy Family prompted by Herod’s massacre of the Holy Innocents, the killing of those male children born near in time to the birth of Jesus. Matthew 2:14 simply recounts that they “..departed for Egypt.” In the Early Renaissance, apocryphal accounts appeared that told of an imagined setting with a variety of additional elements, like Joseph knocking down chestnuts, Mary breastfeeding Jesus, or date palms bending low to provide food for the travelers. Following the tradition for this type of image, we might expect some examples of something to eat in Caravaggio’s painting, but we see no nuts or fruit. Behind Mary, some shadowy brambles and thorns are a reminder of the harshness of the wilderness. However, in appreciation of God’s providence in nature, the artist has added something nutritious: the oak tree behind Mary contains a blooming array of mushrooms; but the subject of this image goes beyond food. Caravaggio took the story in a completely supernatural dimension by adding unique elements unlike any of his predecessors.

This mysterious painting by Leonardo depicts a non-biblical meeting between Our Lady, the Christ Child, and an angel with St. John the Baptist in a rocky grotto. It is the second version of a painting originally commissioned in 1483 to be the central panel of a large altarpiece for the Franciscan Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception in Milan, Italy. While the subject of the Madonna and Child with an infant St. John the Baptist was celebrated throughout the Renaissance, the presence of St. John in this particular setting makes the inspiration for the painting difficult to assess. Though the infant St. John is not recorded as being present in Scripture, Leonardo’s version could possibly be following a medieval tradition of portraying the Holy Family during their flight into Egypt, hence the rock-strewn landscape. While the exact source of the narrative is uncertain, the painting’s rich iconography and harmonious design contain a wealth of meaning. In addition, the unique method of observation Leonardo has employed to the scene sets the painting apart from other artists’ interpretations of the theme.

An Extraordinary Scene
Our Lord is sitting on the ground supported by an angel. The position of Mary’s hand above the Infant’s head as well as her drooping cloak, which stops just short of his extended right hand, produce a vertical movement within the composition that stresses the Christ Child’s importance. Both Christ and the angel look in the direction of St. John; a silent dialogue we are blessed to witness. The environment around them serves to reinforce their otherworldliness. Clark adds, “Like deep notes in the accompaniment of a serious theme the rocks of the background sustain the composition, and give it the resonance of a cathedral.”[9] The fantastical nature of this “cathedral” of caverns points to the profound mystery of the beings in this drama. It is not strange for its own sake; rather it heightens our awareness of the supernatural. The rocks themselves are standard symbols of Christ. Revisiting Ferguson, this attribute “is derived from the story of Moses, who smote the rock from which a spring burst forth to refresh his people. Christ is often referred to as a rock from which flow the pure rivers of the gospel.”[10] The cool body of water in the background recedes into a far-off misty mountain scene not unlike a landscape one would find in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Leonardo’s imagination seemed to know no bounds.

It was an imagination informed by his relentless investigation of the natural world. To heighten the aforementioned three-dimensionality of the painting, Leonardo incorporates his perceptive studies of light, shade, and perspective. These studies can be read in the publication of his numerous notebooks. He writes, “Painting is concerned with all the ten attributes of sight: darkness and light, solidity and color, form and position, distance and nearness, motion and rest.”[11] This painting contains all of these elements. When the results of Leonardo’s explorations into sight and of the natural world are united with religious subject matter, the effect is a true masterpiece of sacred art.

How important is spiritual brotherhood? For those who are called to the ascetic life, either in a specific monastic order or in a “Benedict Option” community in a neighborhood, the consolation of fellowship with others who share your faith can be a vitally important spiritual aid. For St. Anthony the Abbot, his pilgrimage journey to find St. Paul of Thebes is a story of looking for a brother.

St. Anthony’s Journey
This image is one of several panel paintings that illustrate episodes from the life of St. Anthony, who is considered to be one of the founders of desert monasticism: the ascetic movement that began in the Egyptian desert in the 3rd century. Following the biographies of the saint by St. Athanasius and St. Jerome, this image recounts his journey to meet another hermit, St. Paul of Thebes. According to the story, St. Anthony was given knowledge of St. Paul by a heavenly message that told him there was someone who was as an ascetic like himself who had entered the desert even earlier than he. St. Anthony, wanting to see and know him, set out to find him. According to some versions, the human element of vainglory motivated St. Anthony; he wanted to disprove that someone else had actually originated the eremitic— or “desert inhabiting”—vocation. Along the way he experiences unusual challenges, which the collected stories identify as creatures who confront, tempt, or sometimes assist him.

Sano di Pietro of Siena
While there is debate over the attribution, it is certain that this painting was created by a Sienese artist in the early 15th century. Recent scholarship attributes the image to Sano di Pietro, also known as the “Master of the Osservanza,” the title coming from the masterwork, the Osservanza Altarpiece in Siena. Previously, this painting was attributed to Sassetta, a more prominent Sienese painter from that period. The Sienese school in the 15th century held onto the late Gothic style of icon-like depictions, with great attention to isolated details with no interest in the scientific depiction of true perspective space that was being developed in the Florentine Renaissance at this time. The powerful element of naturalism, which makes Renaissance and contemporary realism so convincing, is not to be found in this painting. However, this artist bends time and space toward a perception that goes beyond what a photographic depiction could ever portray.

Continuous Narrative
The painting relies on continuous narrative to depict a timeline of separate events all in one painting. This pictorial device has numerous examples from this time period. The most famous is The Tribute Money by the Florentine, Masaccio, who shows the scenes from Matthew 17:24-27, where St. Peter is first instructed by Jesus to go to the lake and catch a fish, then to pull a coin from its mouth to pay the temple tax tribute. Then the viewer’s attention shifts to Peter catching the fish at the edge of the water, then to Peter handing the money to the Roman official. All of these separate bits of the story occur in one continuous space, so we see St. Peter three times. This device was also used by Sano di Pietro to show St. Anthony setting off on his journey, then encountering a centaur at the edge of a forest, then finally arriving and embracing St. Paul. This way of showing time passing has a practical element: show three events but paint just one picture. However, the practical element is surpassed by the psychological effect of condensing the literal timeline into a flowing whole where the viewer’s eye moves the clock.