Religious Art

Earlier today I started reading through the Leaflet Missal catalogue and I thought it would be a swell thing to showcase which pieces we have in my very own home. These pieces have always been with me and I never noticed them before one year ago. 

 A year ago I was not playing video games, due to hitting bottom, and lo and... behold! images of our Lord and Saints waiting patiently near me. How great is that?

 Our first piece is DaVinci's renown "The Last Supper" 

Mostly known as a brilliance of mind in Engineering, Anatomy, and in almost anything you could think of, Leonardo da Vinci created this particular piece for Duke Ludovico d'Este.  

The painting presents to the viewer the scene of The Last Supper from the final days of Jesus as narrated in the Holy Gospel of John 13:21. Jesus announced to his dearest twelve that one would betray him but also promised and commanded his presence to be repeated through the Catholic Sacrament of the Eucharist. Jesus established the meeting of heaven and earth forever here.  

The original is located in a church ordered built by the very Duke Leonardo was under patron of, but in a recreation I have two in my household. One is lacquered underneath some type of resin sitting on my piano and the other enshrined in a gilded frame in the kitchen.  

This is a truly magnificent painting. Notable features within the piece are Judas's stern visage and the remaining Apostles conversing. 

Luke 22:7-20

[7] Then came the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. [8] Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, "Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover."

[9] "Where do you want us to prepare for it?" they asked.

[10] He replied, "As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters, [11] and say to the owner of the house, 'The Teacher asks: Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?' [12] He will show you a large upper room, all furnished. Make preparations there."

[13] They left and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover.

[14] When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. [15] And he said to them, "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. [16] For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God."

[17] After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, "Take this and divide it among you. [18] For I tell you I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes."

[19] And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me."

[20] In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. 

Our second piece is Sallman's "Head of Christ" 

Warner Sallman started this contemplative snapshot of Jesus in the charcoal medium, for an Evangelical magazine in the 1920's called Covenant Companion. By the mid thirties Mr. Sallman had tried his brush at his first ever oil painting of this project for the 50th anniversary of the Evangelical Covenant Church.   

Joined with his client, Warner's painting has been sold over 500million times throughout the world. The Salvation Army and YMCA even distributed miniatures for oversees soldiers in WWII. The picture is copyrighted so I send the link to you instead. 

 

Our third, and final piece, is Raphael's "La disputa del sacramento"

We don't have this painting but it is amazing. I came to learn of disputation in a book I've been reading by Dr. Thomas Woods Jr. called "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization." For a vivid example of what a disputation means I thought this painting very appropriate. It seems as if in the painting a war of meaning of the Eucharist is on. There are two very obvious camps in the arguement and it's all in good faith. It was painted by Raphael who is responsile for many religious works including the interesting "The School of Athens," and the amazing ceiling fresco "Adam and Eve." 

Something interesting is "what could have motivated the fall?" If Eve and Adam were filled with the divine life, how could they choose not God? I supose it was clearly some crisis of faith on Eve's part, and on Adam's he trusted her because he loves her.

Instead of attempting to talk about disputation's role in antiquity I will let the book speak: 

 

Page 54 of "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization"

 "such questions [having to do with concerns brought up in arguments] were also posed in what was known as the ordinary disputation. The master would assign students to argue one or the other side of a question. When their interaction had ceased, it was then up to the master to 'determine,' or resolve, the question. To obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree, a student was expected to determine a question by himself to the satisfaction of the faculty. (Before being permitted to do so, however, he had to prove that he possessed adequate preparation and was fit to be evaluated.) This kind of emphasis on careful argument, on marshaling a persuasive case for each side of the question, and on resolving a dispute by means of rational tools sounds like the opposite of the intellectual life that most people associate with medieval man. But that was how the degree-granting process operated."

 

Page 65 of the same

 "Christopher Dawson, one of the great historians of the twentieth century, observed that from the days of the earliest universities "the higher studies were dominated by the technique of logical discussion -- the quaestio the public disputation which so largely determined the form of medieval philosophy even in its greatest representatives. 'Nothing,' says Robert of Salome, 'is known perfectly which has not been masticated [ meaning chewed] by the teeth of disputation,' and the tendency to submit every question, from the most obvious to the most abstruse, to this process of mastication not only encouraged readiness of wit and exactness of thought but above all developed that spirit of criticism and methodic doubt to which Western culture and science have owed so much."

 

Count your blessings modernity, you are very very blessed.