Fellow Church Ladies

This just in from St Francis de Sales Seminary in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee:

Today, just like in Biblical times, faithful women play an important role in the vitality and future of our Catholic Church. The de Chantal Society is a newly founded group for women who are passionate about supporting the Church, raising their children and grandchildren in the faith, and supporting vocations. The group is named after St Jane Frances de Chantal, a 16th century woman who was inspired by St Francis de Sales to start the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary.

If you are local, you can check out their meeting schedule here.

I'm not even remotely interested in the Royal Wedding, but I could be convinced to make parts of this. (The doggies are really cute.)

The Entombment - Caravaggio

Of all Caravaggio's paintings, The Entombment is probably the most monumental. A strictly symmetrical group is built up from the slab of stone that juts diagonally out of the background.

The painting is from the altar of the Chiesa Nuova in Rome, which is dedicated to the Pietà. The embalming of the corpse and the entombment are actually secondary to the Mourning of Mary which is the focal point of the lamentation.

Nothing distinguished Caravaggio's history paintings more strongly from the art of the Renaissance than his refusal to portray the human individual as sublime, beautiful and heroic. His figures are bowed, bent, cowering, reclining or stooped. The self confident and the statuesque have been replaced by humility and subjection.

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Ecce Homo - Caravaggio

The figure of Pilate is an assumed self-portrait of Caravaggio.

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The Crowning With Thorns - Caravaggio

This picture creates a different kind of drama than the Crowning with Thorns in Vienna [...]. The vertical format allows us to concentrate on Christ, who occupies the center of the picture. The figure of a man, naked from the waist up, sitting on a chair in front of a barrier in the foreground, holding the rope with which Christ's hands are bound, leads the eye towards him. A second man in a brilliant red robe is almost gently gripping the victim by his upper body and upper left arm. A third assistant is pressing the crown down so hard on to Christ's head with his stick that a drop of blood is running down his temple.

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The Crowning with Thorns - Caravaggio

The front boundary of the picture is articulated by a wooden barrier, on which the captain is leaning, in order to observe the action but take no part in it. He watches the executioner's half-naked assistants abuse Christ at his behest. The powerful figure of the suffering victim, sitting almost naked on a bench, seems larger than he is. Christ's shoulderline continues the shallow diagonal which began with the white feather of the captain's hat, on the left.

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A Holy Week Morning Offering

Good morning, good God!

It has begun, Lord: the week we call Holy...

I've read that theologians argue
over whether or not time, or some unit of time,
can actually be holy...

I'll leave that to the scholars this morning
and simply wonder about my growing in holiness
in the week ahead...

Just shy of four days left in Lent, Lord,
and those are my last four chances in 2011
to live as a Lenten Christian...

Four days to be more faithful to prayer,
morning or night or in between,
or whenever you and I can sit down
and just have a chat, one-on-one,
just the two of us, Lord...

Four days to deny myself
some taste or sip, some pleasure or toy,
and experience the emptiness denial creates,
the hunger it leaves to be fed
and the chance to wonder
how I might fill and feed the void...

Read the rest here.

h/t Whispers.

Flagellation - Caravaggio

This major painting, which (like the Seven Works of Mercy) dates from Caravaggio's first visit to Naples, is disquieting in its own special way. In May 1607 he was paid by Tommaso de' Franchis for an altarpiece to hang in the family chapel in San Domenico, where it stayed till 1972.

The atmosphere is so dense that the pillar before which Christ is being whipped can hardly be made out, but the handling of paint is so fluent that the cruel action taking place has its own powerful rhythm. The viewer is caught up in the horror.

The near-naked Christ is being twisted into position by the torturer on the right while the torturer on the left tears at his hair. At the bottom left a third tormentor stoops to prepare his scourge.

The composition is derived from a fresco by Sebastiano del Piombo, but its restricted palette of dismal colours gives it a grim force that few earlier paintings had equaled.

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Christ at the Column - Caravaggio

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The Denial of Saint Peter - Caravaggio

After the artist's many attempts to intensify the dynamics of a scene from the right, this composition offers a dramatic sequence of figures from the left. On a very dark night with deep shadows and without any indication of artificial light, a soldier wearing a helmet and armor appears from the left. He is turning his face so far round to the maid that it gets swallowed up by the darkness. The maid herself, her face obscured by the soldier's shadow, is peering at the soldier from close quarters. She is pointing her left hand at St Peter, who is holding both hands against his chest in a gestion of confirmation. For the apostle, Caravaggio has chosen a model who would be ideal for an old satyr or for Socrates. The artist usually introduced heads like this for executioners.

The Web Gallery of Art suggests you listen to this piece by Palestrina while contemplating this moving work.