Natalya Rusetska (Ukrainian, 1984–), Nativity, 2016. Tempera on gessoed wood, 17.5 × 15.5 cm.
Gravity’s maker, spinner of spheres and spiraling matter, made into weight, to sweat. His own feet vulnerable, drawn flat and close against the punishing ground.
Star-strayed infant, wrapped in weight, heavy heaven. In the hollow of the years, long and narrow as a well, he waits suspended, bucket-drawn, clapper in a bell.
Ringing and ringing in the heatfolds of gravity, lines and lines of weight leaning us into each other, caught up, tumbled open-face roses in a blue bolt of thorn-pricked cloth.
God made known, fleshly God, Godlight bodied, bleeding out into wood, over stone. God from God, telluric God, shadowcast God, lightstricken God, bloodwritten. The pull
electric of low, deep center. God flesh, corpus God, Verbum corpse, light-riven. Inscribed, blooded, God-heft falling death- bitten into weighted rising, made and given; the miracle of leaven.
LeighAnna Schesser is a Catholic writer from south-central Kansas whose poetry collections include Struck Dumb with Singing (2020) and Heartland (2016).
This a continuation of yesterday’s article.In part 1 I shared three room highlights from my visit to Kolumba museum in Cologne, Germany, run by the city’s Catholic archdiocese; in this final part I will do the same for KMSKA in Antwerp, Belgium, whose Old Masters galleries received a “contemporary injection” in an exhibition that wrapped this week.All photos are my own.
[Content warning: This article contains female nudity: a controversial Renaissance painting of the Virgin Mary, and three photographs of women who have just given birth.]
KMSKA, Antwerp
The Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, or KMSKA for short, is a world-famous museum whose collection spans seven centuries, from the Flemish Primitives to the Expressionists.
When I was there last month, the featured exhibition was Collected with Vision: Private Collections in Dialogue with the Old Masters, which ran from April 4 to October 12, 2025. Organized in conjunction with Geukens & De Vil Projects, it interwove postwar and contemporary works by internationally renowned artists from Belgian private collections with the existing museum collection, “expanding the transhistorical approach already in place. The exhibition offers a reflection on the history of art collecting and asks probing questions about social issues such as gender, power and identity. The role of museums and collectors is the focal point. Do the interventions create a harmonious dialogue with 700 years of art history, or do they give rise to challenging contrasts?” Featured artists included Cindy Sherman, Olafur Eliasson, David Claerbout, Francis Alys, Christian Boltanksi, Tracey Emin, Marlene Dumas, Luc Tuymans, and Louise Bourgeois.
The galleries of the exhibition were organized by theme: Holy, Impotence, Horizon, Image, Entertainment, Profusion, Lessons for Life, Fame, The Salon, Heroes, Evil, The Madonna, Suffering, Redemption, Prayer, Heavens, and Power.
I’ll spotlight what I consider the most successful and intriguing pairings.
First, the “Madonna” room, anchored by the famous Madonna Surrounded by Seraphim and Cherubim by the late medieval French court painter Jean Fouquet. It’s the right wing of a diptych that originally hung above an altar at the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame in Melun.
Jean Fouquet (French, 1410/30–1477/81), Madonna Surrounded by Seraphim and Cherubim, ca. 1450. Oil on panel, 92 × 83.5 cm. Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (KMSKA, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp).
The painting is historically significant—I first encountered it in a college art history course. Commissioned by Etienne Chevalier, treasurer to King Charles VII of France, it portrays the Virgin Mary as the Queen of Heaven, baring her breast ostensibly to nourish the Christ child with her milk. She was probably modeled after Agnès Sorel, the king’s recently deceased mistress and mother of three of his daughters, considered the ideal of feminine beauty at that time in western Europe: pale-skinned, with a high forehead, and fashionable in her ermine cloak.
Though I can appreciate the technical excellence of this painting and the intense reds and blues of the angels, I don’t really like it. Mary seems cold, not very maternal. There’s also an eroticization of her body—not because her breast is exposed, which was common in Marian art, but because it seems to be on display for the viewer; her son’s not interested in feeding—that’s wholly inappropriate for the subject. Why you’d want to memorialize your boss’s sex partner in such a way is beyond me. I’m no prude, but I much prefer Jan van Eyck’s Madonna at the Fountain, on display in the same room:
Jan van Eyck (Flemish, 1390/99–1441), Madonna at the Fountain, 1439. Oil on panel, 19 × 12 cm. Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (KMSKA, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp).
This small painting originally hung not in a church but in someone’s house. Though there’s still an air of formality, it has all the tenderness and connection that the other one lacks. Mother and son embrace in a garden of roses, irises, and lilies of the valley, he reaching round her neck and holding a string of prayer beads, she gazing adoringly at him. They stand beside a fountain, recalling Jesus’s discussion in John 4 about the “living water” he gives to those who thirst. The original wood frame bears the artist’s motto: “As well as I can.”
The deeply engrained portrait of motherhood embodied by the Virgin Mary is juxtaposed most potently with a series of three black-and-white portraits of new mothers by the Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra.
Gallery 2.17 (“The Madonna”) from the KMSKA exhibition Collected with Vision: Private Collections in Dialogue with the Old Masters
The accompanying text read:
Jean Fouquet portrays motherhood as something sacred. Mary as a symbol of purity and devotion is richly dressed in cool colours. Rineke Dijkstra homes in on the vulnerable reality. Her mothers are scantily clad and marked by childbirth. Both works are innovative: Fouquet may have painted his Mary for the first time from a real person, and in its day the painting was regarded as ‘modern’. Dijkstra shows motherhood in all its rawness, a taboo usually withheld from view.
Julie wears hospital pads and mesh underwear, which women often do for several weeks after giving birth to manage postpartum bleeding and urinary incontinence. As for Tecla, blood is running down her leg. And Saskia bears a scar from her cesarean section. A linea nigra (dark line) zips down the abdomen of all three, a temporary pigmentation increase caused by increased hormone levels. I love this triptych that shows motherhood’s glorious, messy, alterative impact on the body—the real physicality of the vocation of bearing children into the world.
I wish there were more imagery of Mary like this, as it would, I think, deepen the wonder of the Incarnation and enhance women’s ability to identify with Mary and thus further enliven her story.
Also in the Madonna gallery was a unique “light poetry” installation by Nick Mattan and Angelo Tijssens—one of seventeen spread throughout the second floor, collectively titled Licht dat naar ons tast (Light that reaches for us). KMSKA had commissioned this couple to bring to life the short verses the museum’s late writer-in-residence Bernard Dewulf had written in response to the galleries’ stated themes.
“Inspired by the museum’s many reading and praying figures, as well as James Ensor’s expressive hand sketches, [Mattan and Tijssens] sought a subtle way to make [Dewulf’s] words tangible,” the museum writes. Their solution was to project them onto the gallery floors from brass cylinders suspended from the ceiling. The words shine like faint specks of light, becoming legible only when a visitor holds their hands, a sweater, or something else up to the light.
Here my husband “holds” a poem written in the voice of Mary:
Nick Mattan (Belgian, 1987–) and Angelo Tijssens (Belgian, 1986–), Licht dat naar ons tast (Light that reaches for us), 2023, featuring seventeen poems by Bernard Dewulf. Commissioned by and permanently installed at the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (KMSKA, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp).
“Madonna” by Bernard Dewulf
Virgin, mother, wife – I have two breasts that stand for my three souls. I show you one of them, and whose it is is yours to choose.
Translated from the original Dutch by David Colmer
Kind of cheeky! Dewulf speaks of Mary’s three identities and lets us decide if the breast she bares in Fouquet’s painting represents her naked innocence, her nurturing impulse, or her desire to please her husband. (Traditionally in art, it has always stood for the second.)
The next gallery I entered was themed “Suffering.”
Gallery 2.19 (“Suffering”) from the KMSKA exhibition Collected with Vision: Private Collections in Dialogue with the Old Masters
As one would expect, it’s inhabited by several Old Master paintings of Christ’s passion, most notably a triptych by the Flemish Baroque artist Peter Paul Rubens.
Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640), Epitaph of Jan Michielsen and His Wife Maria Maes (aka Christ on the Straw, Madonna, and Saint John), 1618. Oil on panel, 138 × 178 cm. Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (KMSKA, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp).
The central panel shows the dead Christ being laid out on a marble slab and wrapped in a shroud by Joseph of Arimathea, while his mother and Mary Magdalene (and the apostle John in the background) mourn him. The left wing shows Mary supporting the pudgy little baby Jesus as he takes some of his first steps, while the right wing shows John, whose symbol is the eagle, writing his Gospel that will place Jesus’s death in the context of the larger story of his life of ministry and his resurrection.
This painting, along with Anthony van Dyck’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ and The Holy Trinity by a follower of Rubens’s (which shows God the Father cradling the dead body of God the Son in an image type sometimes referred to as the Mystic Pietà), are juxtaposed with three photographs by Nan Goldin that show the impact of AIDS on her friend, the Parisian gallery owner Gilles Dusein, and his partner, the artist Gotscho.
Nan Goldin (American, 1953–), Gilles in Hospital, Gilles’ Arm, and Gotscho Kissing Gilles, 1993. C-prints. Private collection.
Dusein’s emaciated arm, resting weakly on a hospital sheet, recalls the limp arm of Christ in paintings of the Deposition and Entombment; and Gotscho’s kiss, the love and grief of Jesus’s mother and friends as they watched their loved one suffer and succumb to death.
By displaying these disparate artworks from vastly different contexts across from each other, we are encouraged to draw connections between the suffering of Christ and that of the LGBTQ+ community. While Christians in Rubens’s day would sit before images of Jesus in pain or sorrow or having died a torturous and untimely death, and deepen their empathy and love, so too might we do well to sit prayerfully, humbly, empathetically, with contemporary images of suffering, seeking to enter the stories they tell.
Antonello da Messina (Italian, 1430–1479), Calvary, 1475. Oil on panel, 52.5 × 42.5 cm. Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (KMSKA, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp).
Compare these figures to contemporary Belgian artist Berlinde de Bruyckere’s Schmerzensmann (Man of Sorrows), on loan from the collection of David and Indré Roberts (see wide-view photo above). The piece consists of a wax and resin mold of a contorted human form, its skin stretched and broken, its legs wrapped around a tall rusty pole.
“Man of Sorrows” is also the title of an Early Netherlandish painting by Albrecht Bouts and a modern painting by James Ensor, which KMSKA displays side-by-side.
Albrecht Bouts (Flemish, 1451/55–1549), Man of Sorrows, 1500–1525. Oil on panel, diameter 29 cm. Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (KMSKA, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp).
The earlier one is an incredibly moving image of pathos. Christ wears a thick, twisted, mock crown whose thorns dig holes into his forehead and draw blood. His eyes are red with tears and sunken in, and his lips are turning blue with the pallor of death. I find it quite beautiful, insofar as an image of suffering can be beautiful. (That’s a topic for another day.)
James Ensor (Belgian, 1860–1949), Man of Sorrows, 1891. Oil on panel, 20 × 15.5 cm. Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (KMSKA, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp).
The Ensor painting, on the other hand, is decidedly not beautiful. In fact, I think it’s the ugliest image of Christ I’ve ever seen, with his crumpled face, scraggly hair, and bared teeth. There’s something very unsettling about his expression, and no wonder, as the curatorial text informs that Ensor drew inspiration from the masks of demon characters in Japanese theater. “His [Ensor’s] Jesus screams with rage about the injustice inflicted on him,” the label says. Is that what that expression is? To me he looks sinister. Like he’s growling at us. And I dislike his dinky crown that he wears like a headband; give me Bouts’s gnarly one instead.
I’m in favor of Christ images that show the rage he must have felt, but I don’t think Ensor is successful if that was his aim. To name a few modern artists who were: Guido Rocha (Tortured Christ, 1975) and David Mach (Die Harder, 2011), both of whom capture Jesus’s cry of dereliction on the cross.
The final themed gallery I’ll call out is “Heavens.”
Gallery 2.22 (“Heavens”) from the KMSKA exhibition Collected with Vision: Private Collections in Dialogue with the Old Masters
The dominant Old Master work is a set of three panels from the upper tier of a colossal altarpiece that Hans Memling painted for the church at the Benedictine Abbey of Santa Maria la Real in Najera in northern Spain. All the other panels are lost.
The museum titles the central panel God the Father with Singing Angels—but I think the figure is more properly God the Son, Jesus Christ, portrayed as Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World). In his left hand he holds a cross-surmounted crystal globe, signifying his dominion over the earth, and with the other hand he gestures blessing. He wears a tiara and a red cope decorated with gold-thread embroidery, pearls, and precious stones, and his collar bears the words Agyos Otheos (Holy God).
Hans Memling (German Flemish, ca. 1430–1494), God the Father with Singing Angels, 1483–94. Oil on panel, 164 × 212 cm. Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (KMSKA, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp).
Surrounding him is a musical band of angels, singing his praises from songbooks and, in the flanking panels, playing a variety of wind and string instruments: (from left to right) a psaltery, a tromba marina, a lute, a trumpet, a shawm, a straight trumpet, a looped trumpet, a portative organ, a harp, and a fiddle.
Hans Memling (German Flemish, ca. 1430–1494), Music-Making Angels (left), 1483–94. Oil on panel, 165 × 230 cm. Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (KMSKA, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp).Hans Memling (German Flemish, ca. 1430–1494), Music-Making Angels (right), 1483–94. Oil on panel, 165 × 230 cm. Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (KMSKA, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp).
This ensemble probably evokes for you a particular sound—something like Tallis or Palestrina—soaring polyphonic vocals, a gentle yet majestic accompaniment. But instead, a different soundtrack played, audibly, in the room: songs from the 1967 debut album of the American rock band the Velvet Underground, several of which use religious language to describe the experience of doing drugs. “Heroin” opens like this:
I don’t know just where I’m going But I’m gonna try for the kingdom, if I can ’Cause it makes me feel like I’m a man When I put a spike into my vein
And I’ll tell you things aren’t quite the same When I’m rushing on my run And I feel just like Jesus’ son
This aural element was complemented, on the gallery wall, by the guitar of Lou Reed, the band’s lead singer and songwriter. It’s signed by Andy Warhol, who produced and championed the Velvet Underground & Nico album and made its banana cover art, replicated on the instrument.
Lou Reed’s “Banana Guitar,” from a private collection
Adding to the mix, in the corner of the room was an installation by the Copenhagen-born and -based artist Olafur Eliasson, called Lighthouse Lamp. “Affixed to a tripod, a lamp situated within a Fresnel lens—a compact lens which was developed for lighthouses—emits a band of white light in 360 degrees,” the artist’s website explains. In this space, the beam takes on a triangular shape.
Olafur Eliasson (Icelandic Danish, 1967–), Lighthouse Lamp, 2004. Mixed media. Collection of Filiep and Mimi Libeert.
There was also an altarpiece of The Last Judgment and the Seven Acts of Mercy by Bernard van Orley, which references Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 25 about one’s entry into heaven being contingent on whether, in this life, you feed the hungry, give shelter to the homeless, visit the prisoner, and so on.
The “Heavens” gallery begs the question: How does one define “heaven”? Is it a physical place? A state of mind? An encounter? I think of related words like bliss, beatitude, communion, the sublime.
The celestial scene painted by Memling—and remember, it’s only partial, as the rest is missing—is beautifully rendered, but it also encapsulates what has become the popular cliché of heaven: angels on clouds, strumming harps, and a regal God swaying his scepter. Music-making, angelic beings, and the reign of God are all certainly a part of how the Bible describes heaven. But it’s also so much more. It’s a garden and a city. It’s healing and restoration. It’s the righting of wrongs. It’s all things made new. It’s jubilee. It’s a wedding—deep and lasting union between God and humanity. It’s an eternal interlocking of God’s space and ours (earth). It’s a global, transhistorical community of faith, gathered together around Christ their head, worshipping him in diverse languages, musical styles, dances, and other cultural expressions. It’s the culmination of the greatest story ever told.
Today, Memling’s vision of heaven probably fails to captivate most people, even Christians. So it’s an interesting experiment to compare it to how others conceive of the concept.
Eliasson’s Lighthouse Lamp wasn’t a commission on or explicit treatment of the theme, but the curator saw fit to place it beside Memling, because heaven is often conceived of as a light-filled space, and light can evoke the divine. For this reason, Memling painted his background gold. What’s more, the three-sidedness of Eliasson’s light beam may, for some, evoke the Trinity, the classical Christian doctrine of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost that Memling alludes to with the three precious stones on the fibula of Christ’s mantle.
Still, other folks experience what could be termed “heavenly” transcendence through the use of mind-altering substances, as did the members of the Velvet Underground, whose drug trips gave birth to their experimental music—which, in turn, has taken others to a transcendent place.
Whether in special exhibitions or displays of their permanent collections, I want to see more of this in museums: bringing old and new artworks into conversation with one another around universal themes, in the same room. (In some museums, the labels sometimes cross-reference works in other galleries, but that’s not the same.) Although there are benefits to the traditional approach of laying out art chronologically to give you discrete pictures of different historical eras and allow you to progress by time period, a thematic approach that compiles works from across time also has its benefits.
I’ve found cross-temporal art displays to be especially vitalizing, because instead of trying to tell history, they more naturally invite personal reflection and tend to be less academic in tone. Such an approach makes the art accessible to a larger number of people, especially those who don’t frequent museums. It helps us see the relevance of the Old Masters (or whatever the museum’s collection focus) for today—how the subjects they depicted often address topics or questions we still ask or wonder about or that reflect aspects of the common human experience, such as joy, suffering, family, death, betrayal, or festivity. Creating relationships between works made centuries apart, highlighting similarities and differences, can give us a broader perspective.
And for this museumgoer (pointing at myself) who is attracted to medieval and early Renaissance art and sometimes bypasses the contemporary galleries, the integrative approach is more engaging. Giving contemporary works a point of connection with the works I’m already inclined to like helps me enter into them more easily and fruitfully, and I’m more likely to spend time with them than if they were segregated.
New and old don’t have to be equally represented—Kolumba skews heavily contemporary, whereas KMSKA lets its strengths shine with the Old Masters, and yet the occasional unexpected intervention from years past or future always caused me to pause and be curious. Over the last several years I’ve been noticing other museums engaging in similar playful exchange—plopping a contemporary work into the medieval section, or vice versa, in a way that provides some kind of illumination.
This was my first and only visit to KMSKA, and as I understand, there’s not the same degree of intermixing of old and new year-round; this was a special exhibition that brought in contemporary works from outside, as the institution itself owns very few. But they did do something similar last year with the exhibition What’s the Story?, and the dangling light poems by Bernard Dewulf are a permanent fixture in the Old Masters galleries.
Have you been to a museum where works from different time periods were displayed side-by-side to create a discourse, and if so, did that choice enhance your engagement, insight, or appreciation? I’d love to hear what other museums are doing this!
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One of the delightful surprises of my recent trip to Germany and Belgium was to find, in two of the museums I visited, an integration of the old and new in the curated galleries. Typically, art museums choose to arrange their collections chronologically, grouping together artworks from a particular era, and within each era, like styles. But in Kolumba museum in Cologne and the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (KMSKA) in Antwerp, medieval art from each museum’s collection (and in the case of KMSKA, Renaissance and Baroque art too) is displayed alongside contemporary pieces, creating a vibrant dialogue.
With the exception of the exterior shot of Kolumba, all photos in this post are my own.
Kolumba Kunstmuseum, Cologne
Originally called the Diözesanmuseum (Diocesan Museum), Kolumba was founded in 1853 by the fledgling Christlicher Kunstverein für das Erzbisthum Köln (Christian Art Association for the Archbishopric of Cologne), making it the city’s second oldest museum after the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum. Its collection focus for the majority of its history was late medieval art from Cologne and the Lower Rhine.
Kolumba’s first permanent home, just south of Cologne Cathedral, was a former sugar factory, but the building was destroyed in World War II, though much of the art had been safely evacuated beforehand. After the war, Kolumba relocated its art to a grammar school, then to rented rooms in the Gereonstraße, then to the Curia building at Roncalliplatz 2. But the limited space was an issue.
In 1989, ownership of the museum was transferred to the Archdiocese of Cologne, who decided to expand the collection to include modern and contemporary art, not only by German artists but by international artists as well. The museum shifted its approach from displaying traditional sacred works only, to placing those works in juxtaposition with newer ones by artists who aren’t necessarily Christian but whose works can converse fruitfully with their core collection. They also secured funding to construct a new permanent building.
In 2004, the museum’s name was changed to Kolumba in honor of the history of the site on which the new (and current) building would stand: atop the ruins of the medieval St. Kolumba church, destroyed in an air raid in 1943. St. Columba of Sens was a third-century virgin martyr who was born in Spain but lived mostly in France. The church dedicated to her in Cologne once housed Rogier van der Weyden’s St. Columba Altarpiece (now at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich), a triptych with scenes of the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Presentation in the Temple.
Kolumba museum, Cologne. Photo: HP Schaefer / Wikimedia Commons.
Kolumba museum’s permanent home opened in 2007 at Kolumbastraße 4. Designed by the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor (view more architectural photos here), the building encapsulates the bombed-out Gothic ruins of St. Kolumba with forty-foot-high, porous concrete walls, above which sit the floors of the museum.
The ruins of St. Kolumba church, which dates back to the tenth century (with subsequent expansions and a Gothic-style rebuilding), are integrated into the architecture of Kolumba museum.Exterior of the “Madonna in the Ruins” chapel, dedicated 1950, underneath Kolumba museum in Cologne, with stained glass designed by Ludwig Gies (1887–1966), installed 1954.
The postwar chapel is not accessible from inside the museum; it has its own separate entrance, which, as I found out after I had already left, is on the south side of the building, along Brückenstraße.
But I did cross over the excavation site of St. Kolumba to which the written museum guide directs visitors (it’s labeled “room 3”), and through which a walkway has been constructed. As I took in the war-wrought devastation, I wondered about the sounds I was hearing from an audio system. Turns out it was a sound installation called Pigeon Soundings by the American artist Bill Fontana. In 1994, he made a series of eight-channel sound map recordings of the pigeons that were inhabiting the St. Kolumba ruins at the time, particularly the rafters of the temporary wooden roof that had been erected. The recordings picked up not just the birds’ cooing and flapping, but also the ambient sounds outside.
Above this darkened space, Kolumba has sixteen exhibition rooms. The museum reinstalls its collection annually, each fall opening a new exhibition. I was there for the first day of “make the secrets productive!” Art in Times of Unreason, which runs from September 15, 2025, to August 14, 2026. The lack of art signage throughout is deliberate, to promote a more meditative experience; instead, visitors are given a (German-language) booklet, organized by room, that identifies the pieces on display and provides commentary for some.
Room 8 features a fifteenth-century sculpture of Christ at Rest—“at rest” not in the sense of being at peace in mind or spirit (he is visibly troubled), but rather in a bodily state of motionlessness or inactivity. Sometimes also called Christ in Distress, Christ on the Cold Stone, or Pensive Christ, the iconography shows an interior moment during Christ’s passion in which, having just been flogged, he sits awaiting his final torture: crucifixion.
Christus in der Rast (Christ at Rest), Upper Rhine, ca. 1480. Linden wood with visible primer and remnants of colored paint. Kolumba museum, Cologne.
Though the Gospels don’t mention a moment of seated pause in the narrative, artists were influenced by the figure of Job, an innocent sufferer who in that way prefigured Christ, and in particular the description in Job 2:8 of him sitting on a dung heap. The image of Jesus preparing to meet his death was meant to inspire feelings of pity. Isolated from the action and from all the other characters, the lone figure invites viewers to enter empathetically into the emotional anguish he suffered on his way to the cross.
At Kolumba, this sculpture is surrounded by large-scale, black-and-white photographs from the Transzendentaler Konstruktivismus (Transcendental Constructivism) series by the collaborative duo of German neo-dadaist artists Anna and Bernhard Blume. In the series the couple is threatened by white geometric objects that are unleashed on them in a blur of motion.
Foreground: Christ at Rest, Upper Rhine, ca. 1480. Background: Anna Blume (1936–2020) and Bernhard Blume (1937–2011), photograph from the Transcendental Constructivism series, 1992–94.
One of the other resonant pairings at Kolumba is in room 21, which stages a fifteenth-century Ecce homo sculpture across from a colored chalk drawing on a three-paneled blackboard.
The title Ecce homo, Latin for “Behold the man,” comes from John 19:5, where the Roman governor Pilate presents a scourged, thorn-crowned Jesus to a mob that demands his execution. Like Christ on the Cold Stone, this too is a devotional image intended to stir the affections of the viewer, who is called, like the crowds on that fateful day, to gaze upon the wounded God-man. His hands are bound in front of him, evoking a sacrificial sheep tied up for slaughter. What have we done?
Ecce Homo, Cologne, ca. 1460–1500. Linden wood. Kolumba museum, Cologne.
While I instantly recognized this subject, the drawing was more of a mystery.
Paul Thek (American, 1933–1988), Plumed Serpent, 1969. Colored chalk on blackboard, 110 × 358 cm. Kolumba museum, Cologne.
Not having any wall text to clue me in, I had to simply observe and intuit. I saw a winding chute, rainbow-colored, with a few white feathers sticking out of it. And is that water in the background?
I noticed, too, that it’s a triptych, a common format for altarpieces.
Water, birds, rainbows—those all play into the story of Noah’s flood, in which the rainbow signifies God’s promise to never again destroy the earth and all its inhabitants. It’s a symbol of grace and reconciliation.
There are also two prophetic texts in scripture that associate the rainbow with Christ and his glory: Ezekiel’s and John’s recorded visions of the divine throne (Ezek. 1:28; Rev. 4:3).
The curator has positioned Jesus facing the rainbow road, across a fairly large gap. Since, as the museum states, the artworks are arranged to interpret each other, at least in part, then it’s possible this room conveys Jesus following the path of promise, even as it takes dark turns. Or choosing to endure the judgment of the cross to secure a glorious inheritance for his beloveds.
After these ruminations, I looked up the work in the booklet: Plumed Serpent by Paul Thek.
Hmm. In the Christian tradition serpents are often associated with the devil. However, in Numbers 21:1–9, Moses lifts one up on his staff in the wilderness and it becomes an agent of healing and even a symbol of Christ himself, lifted up on the cross for the salvation of the world (John 3:14–15).
The description in the booklet informed me that “plumed serpent” is the English translation of the Nahuatl name Quetzalcoatl, an Aztec creator-god. I don’t know much about pre-Columbian mythologies, so I looked him up when I got home. Apparently he represents the union of earth (reptile) and sky (feathers), and he is also known as the god of the morning star. (Jesus also calls himself the bright morning star!) Although he was initially portrayed as a large snake covered in quetzal feathers, from 1200 onward, he often appeared in human form, wearing shell jewelry and a conical hat. What I find most striking about his story is that he gave new life to humankind by gathering their bones from the land of the dead, grinding them down, and mixing them with his own blood from self-inflicted wounds.
I also did some research on the artist, of whose work Kolumba has the most comprehensive holdings. Paul Thek was a devout Catholic, an identity complicated by the fact that he was also gay. He rose to fame in the 1960s with his “Technological Reliquaries,” hyperrealistic wax sculptures depicting severed body parts and chunks of flesh in vitrines, inspired by his visit to the Capuchin catacombs in Palermo. Much of his art deals with death and rebirth, divinity and decay, mystical transformation.
Feathers feature in another piece of his from the same year as Plumed Serpent: Feathered Cross. (See it against the wall in a photo from the 2021 exhibition Paul Thek: Interior/Landscape at the Watermill Center in Water Mill, New York.) The feathers’ softness, their weightlessness, seem to contradict the reality of crucifixion. But I think it’s Thek’s way of conveying the transcendent meaning of that act of self-giving. I also think of how down feathers fill pillows on which we rest. “Come to me, all you who are weary,” Christ says (Matt. 11:28); we can rest on his finished work.
But back to Plumed Serpent. Chalk is its material—its ephemerality must be a nightmare for conservators, and indeed it seems like some of the drawing has partially rubbed away. But this choice of material plays into the artist’s interest in the enduring versus the perishable, and the transitory dimensions of death.
On the right side of room 21, against the wall, are three identical offset-printed artist’s books by Bernhard Cella titled Ein Jahrhundert der verletzten Männer (A Century of Injured Men). Published in 2022, the 152-page book contains photographs of convalescent men over the course of the twentieth century, questioning heroic images of masculinity. I’m assuming many of the injuries were caused by the two world wars.
Vulnerability, injury, sacrifice, healing, the transmutation of pain, new life—these are the themes I gathered from this room.
The current Kolumba exhibition features much more contemporary art than medieval—there are some 175 contemporary works on display, compared to six from the Middle Ages—and I suspect that is now their modus operandi. So, the cross-temporal dialogue isn’t happening in every room, at least not explicitly.
I appreciate the uniqueness of this ecclesiastically run museum, acquiring and showing contemporary works by artists from a range of backgrounds while not shunning its own history as collectors and preservers of medieval German religious art.
As a Christian, I found myself latching on to the imagery that was familiar to me, like Jesus as the Man of Sorrows, and interpreting the surrounding works in light of that. But it seems to me the interpretive process could also move in the other direction, and I wonder how a visitor who doesn’t share my Christian vantage point would respond to the two rooms I’ve highlighted.
For two additional artworks I photographed at Kolumba, an ivory crucifix and an installation with coat, hat, and oil lamp, see my Instagram shares here and here.
Part 2, my reflections on my KMSKA visit, will be published tomorrow.
This month I traveled to parts of Germany and Belgium to experience some of the art of those countries, with a focus on medieval religious art. In Brussels, besides exploring the famous Oldmasters Museum (part of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium), I visited the lesser-known Art and History Museum, whose collection includes not just western European art from prehistoric times through the nineteenth century, but also art from Asia (China, Korea, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Nepal, Turkey, Iran, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma), Oceania, the pre-Columbian Americas, and ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome.
I spent the most time with the medieval European art on the ground floor—wooden statuettes, ivory and alabaster carvings, stained glass, paintings, metalworks, and tapestries. With the Google Translate app open, I hovered my phone over the Dutch and French descriptive labels to read them in English.
My favorite tapestry I saw, from fifteenth-century Tournai, portrays three scenes from the passion of Christ: Christ Carrying the Cross, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection. The museum gallery it’s displayed in also houses a large medieval loom, which is what’s protruding at the bottom right corner of the following photo.
Scenes from the Passion, Tournai, ca. 1445–55. Tapestry of wool and silk, 424 × 911 cm. Art and History Museum, Brussels, Belgium, Inv. 3644. All photos by Victoria Emily Jones.
Tapestries made in the Flemish city of Tournai were among the most sought after in the fifteenth century. These large-scale wall hangings were bought by royalty, nobles, and high-ranking clergy to decorate their palaces. This one, nearly thirty feet long, is the second of a two-part hanging whose first part (portraying Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, and the Arrest of Christ) is in the collection of the Vatican.
Below are some detail shots.
First, Christ carries his cross. A soldier pulls him forward by a rope tied to his wrists, while tauntingly standing on the vertical wood beam and hitting him with a baton. On a less serious note, those are some spiffy face-shaped shoulder scales on the right.
Christ crucified:
A group of four women mourn—the Virgin Mary up front in the blue mantle, backed by three other Marys—alongside a curly-haired apostle John in green.
On Christ’s right (the viewer’s left), the penitent thief, with his last breaths, says, Memento mei, Domine, dum ven[eris in regnum tuum] (Remember me, Lord, when you come into your kingdom) (Luke 23:42).
The pointing man below the cross to Christ’s left, our right, is the Roman centurion (officer in command of one hundred soldiers) who, when Jesus died, proclaimed, Vere filius Dei erat iste (Truly this man was the Son of God!) (Matt. 27:54; Mark 15:39; cf. Luke 23:47).
On the other side of the cross, a Roman spearman, to whom tradition gives the name Longinus, points to his eyes. That’s because according to a medieval legend, Longinus was blind, but when he pierced Jesus’s side to verify his death, some of the blood from the open wound fell into Longinus’s eyes and restored his sight, after which he confessed allegiance to Christ.
Despite these three stories—two biblical, one apocryphal—of Christian conversion at the cross, Christ’s death did not move all the hearts of those present. At the base of the cross, two men fight with knives over Christ’s garment, their greed and aggression a foil to Christ’s selflessness and gentleness, and an example of the sin he came to redeem us from.
And again, pacifist though I am, I can’t help but remark on the fine-looking armor in the crowd:
The right-most third of the tapestry portrays vignettes of the Resurrection.
At the bottom, Christ emerges triumphant from his tomb, holding a banner in one hand and bestowing blessing with the other.
In the middle ground, the three Marys arrive at the empty tomb, ointments in hand, where they meet an angel who informs them that Christ has risen from the dead. Mary Magdalene is the one with her hair uncovered.
The risen Christ appears again at the top right, harrowing hell, a realm that is represented as a turreted fortress from whose windows fiery red demons glower and smirk. Christ has come to break down the doors and release the Old Testament saints being held captive—that is, those who died trusting in Yahweh and who were awaiting Christ’s redemption in the netherworld.
Let’s zoom in closer, shall we?
This is just one of the many artistic treasures, woven and otherwise, at Brussels’ Art and History Museum. I highly recommend a visit! I easily spent several hours there.
>> “What Remains: The Making of Ellsworth Kelly’s Last Work,”Image interview with Rick Archer: I got to experience Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin—a modernist “chapel” containing three stained glass windows, fourteen black-and-white marble panels (Stations of the Cross), and a redwood totem—while in Texas for a CIVA conference in 2021; see some of my photos below. Kelly was an atheist inspired by Romanesque church architecture, and the architect he chose to collaborate with on Austin, Rick Archer, is a Christian. In this wonderful new interview by Bruce Buescher, Archer discusses his working relationship with Kelly, Kelly’s desire for randomization and form over meaning, the technical and architectural challenges of bringing Kelly’s vision to life, religious references, and the artist’s objective for the space. “I hope when people go in here, they will experience joy,” Archer remembers Kelly saying.
Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923–2015), Austin, 1986/2015. Artist-designed building with colored glass windows, black-and-white marble panels, and redwood totem, 63 × 76 × 28 ft. Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.
In this recent interview for Comment magazine, Anderson explains his purpose in writing the book:
I have become increasingly convinced that so many pivotal artists and artworks over the past century are deeply shaped by religious traditions and seriously engaged in theological questioning, but this remains severely under-interpreted or misinterpreted in the scholarship about these artists. One might see these threads running through an artist’s artworks and personal writings and even discuss these topics with the artist in their studio, but when one moves to the scholarly writing and teaching about that same artist, that language consistently disappears or is transposed into another register—usually politics, occasionally a highly esoteric spirituality. I wanted to understand, at a non-superficial level, why this was the case, and I wanted to see how other ways of speaking and writing about this topic might be possible.
Don’t miss, at the end of the article, his three hopes for the field of “art and theology,” which I very much share!
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LECTURE: “The Problems and Possibilities of Visual Theology: The Ascension as a Case Study” by Jonathan A. Anderson: With Ascension Day coming up on May 29, it’s timely to share this talk given by Jonathan Anderson (see previous roundup item) a few years ago at Duke Divinity School, where he worked as a postdoctoral associate of theology and the visual arts from 2020 to 2023. Anderson explores a handful of images depicting the Ascension of Christ, a particularly challenging subject because of the spatial ambiguity. The scriptural accounts of the event (Luke 24:50–53 and Acts 1:6–11) beg the question, “What does ‘lifted up’ mean? Where is Jesus?” Attempting to work out these spatial difficulties visually can be theologically and exegetically productive, Anderson claims—even if it sometimes leads to unsatisfying results, as, Anderson says, it often does in Western art from the Renaissance onward. By contrast, when artists foster intertextual readings across the biblical canon and focus not so much on what the Ascension looks like as a historical event but rather on what it means, they are generally more successful.
Here are some time stamps, with links to the artworks discussed:
38:33: The Ascension by Andrei Rublev: “Fundamental to all [the Ascension icons of the East],” Anderson says, “is the notion that the Ascension doesn’t have much to do with a higher part of the atmosphere (which Western images are continually struggling with) but with an entirely different kind of space. The relevant coordinates here are not down and up, or even higher and lower, but earth and heaven, old creation and new creation.” Anderson’s quotation of Douglas B. Farrow’s Ascension Theology is illuminating!
44:30: Interior of the katholikon (principal church) of Hosios Loukas
53:40: Q&A
Katholikon of Hosios Loukas monastery, Boeotia, Greece, 1011–12
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INSTRUMENTAL JAZZ: “Prayer” by Cory Wong: This video shows a live performance of Cory Wong’s “Prayer” on July 4, 2023, at Gesù music hall in Montreal. Wong, on guitar at far left, is joined by Ariel Posen on guitar, Victor Wooten on bass, and Nate Smith on drums. I learned about Wong through his collaborative album with Jon Batiste, Meditations (2020), which includes a version of this piece featuring Batiste’s piano playing.
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EXHIBITION: OMG! Reli Popart, Museum Krona, Uden, Netherlands, April 5–September 7, 2025: This exhibition at Museum Krona (housed in the complex of the still-active Birgittine Abbey of Maria Refugie in Uden, Netherlands) explores the connection between the pop art movement and Christianity through works by artists such as Andy Warhol, Corita Kent, Niki de Saint Phalle, and especially Dutch artists, including Woody van Amen and Wim Delvoye. Pop art is characterized by the use of imagery from popular culture, sourced from television, magazines, comic books, ads—and sometimes from the trash bin.
Jacques Frenken [previously], for example, built a body of work by salvaging discarded plaster sculptures of Christ and the saints—mass-produced for Catholic devotional use—and reconstructing them into assemblages. For his Spijkerpiëta, he “brought the Pietà back into our midst and accentuated the pain it radiates with nails,” the artist said.
Jacques Frenken (Dutch, 1929–2022), Spijkerpiëta (Nail Pietà), 1967. Plaster, paint, iron, wood. Museum Krona, Uden, Netherlands.
Another artist represented in the exhibition is Hans Truijen, who was commissioned in the 1960s by St. Martin’s Church in Maastricht to design eight stained glass windows for their worship space. The four along the left aisle of the nave depict human and divine suffering, whereas those on the right express hope, love, freedom, and happiness. He chose photographic images from various periodicals, including ones of the Vietnam War, and transferred them to glass using a special screen-printing process.
Hans Truijen (Dutch, 1928–2005), Studies for the eight stained glass windows commissioned by St. Martinuskerk, Wyck-Maastricht, Netherlands, 1966–68. Courtesy of the artist’s son, Marc Truijen.
Crozier Head with the Crucifixion, Paris, ca. 1350. Elephant ivory, 5 13/16 × 3 1/8 × 1 1/2 in. (14.8 × 8 × 3.8 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The reverse side depicts the Virgin and Child with Saint Denis.
This carved head of a bishop’s staff from medieval France depicts Christ crucified on the tree of the cross, flanked by his mother Mary and his friend John. From the base of the cross flows a healing stream of blood, which an angel kneels to catch in his hands.
LISTEN: “O Love Divine, What Hast Thou Done” | Words by Charles Wesley, 1742
I can’t decide which of the following two tunes I prefer, so I proffer them both. The first is a traditional four-part hymn tune, sung a cappella, whereas the second is a contemporary guitar-driven tune.
>> Music by Isaac Baker Woodbury, 1850 | Performed by the Choral Arts Society of Washington, dir. Scott Tucker, on Lift Up Your Voice: Hymns of Charles Wesley, 2015:
>> Music by Heaven’s Dave, on Beyond the Starry Skies, 2023:
O Love divine, what hast thou done? Th’ immortal God hath died for me; The Father’s co-eternal Son Bore all my sins upon the tree. Th’ immortal God for me hath died; My Lord, my Love, is crucified.
Behold him, all ye that pass by, The bleeding Prince of Life and Peace; Come, sinners, see your Savior die, And say, “Was ever grief like his?” Come feel with me his blood applied; My Lord, my Love, is crucified.
Is crucified for me and you, To bring us rebels back to God. Believe, believe the record true: We all are bought with Jesus’ blood. Pardon for all flows from his side; My Lord, my Love, is crucified.
Then let us sit beneath his cross, And gladly catch the healing stream; All things for him account but loss, And give up all our hearts to him— Of nothing speak, or think beside, But Jesus and him crucified.
LOOK: Stations of the Cross #2 and #11 by Charles Ndege
Charles S. Ndege (Tanzanian, 1966–), Station II: Jesus Takes Up His Cross. Wall painting from St. Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe Church, Nyakato (Mwanza region), Tanzania. Source: Were You There? Stations of the Cross by Diana L. HayesCharles S. Ndege, Station XI: Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross
The cement walls of St. Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe Church in Nyakato, Tanzania, bear a series of murals by the Tanzanian artist Charles Ndege depicting the Stations of the Cross, set around the southern shores of Lake Victoria.
I couldn’t find what year the murals were painted, but the earliest would be 1995, as they are mentioned (and one is reproduced) in the book Towards an African Narrative Theology by the American Maryknoll missionary priests Joseph Healey and Donald Sybertz, which came out in 1996.
I found out about Ndege’s Stations from the book Were You There? Stations of the Cross (Orbis, 2000), a small paperback that reproduces all fourteen scenes in full color and features reflections by the African American Catholic theologian Diana L. Hayes. I recommend it.
See how they done my Lord See how they done my Lord (Can’t you) See how they done my Lord Lord, have mercy on me
Well, they whipped him all night long They whipped him all night long (Tell me) Whipped him all night long Lord, have mercy on me
Well, they whipped him up a hill They whipped him up a hill (Tell me) Whipped him up a hill Lord, have mercy on me
Well, they nailed him to the cross They nailed him to the cross (Tell me) Nailed him to the cross Lord, have mercy on me
Well, two thieves was hanging beside him Two thieves was hanging beside him (Tell me) Two thieves was hanging beside him Lord, have mercy on me
This song is sung by six unidentified men incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, known colloquially as Angola Prison, one of the largest maximum-security prisons in the United States. A lament reflecting on Christ’s passion, it’s one of a series of Black gospel songs and spirituals recorded at the prison by the folklorist and musicologist Harry Oster in the late 1950s.
“How they done him” is slang for “how they wronged him” or “how they treated him badly.”
I can’t help but wonder if the singers identified with the abuse Christ suffered and found comfort in knowing that God himself walked the road before them and is with them in their own ways of sorrow. Perhaps (instead or too) they saw themselves in the penitent thief mentioned in the last stanza, who acknowledged the justice of his own sentence and asked Jesus to remember him in God’s kingdom.
The song’s refrain, “Lord, have mercy,” is a common one in liturgical churches, one that invokes God’s mercy in light of personal and corporate sins. It’s a plea for God’s compassion and forgiveness, and for relief.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.
—Isaiah 53:7
As soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. They bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate. Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” He answered him, “You say so.” Then the chief priests accused him of many things. Pilate asked him again, “Have you no answer? See how many charges they bring against you.” But Jesus made no further reply, so that Pilate was amazed.
—Mark 15:1–5
LOOK: Christ before the Judge by Cecil Collins
Cecil Collins (British, 1908–1989), Christ before the Judge, 1954–56. Oil on board, 47 1/2 × 35 1/2 in. (120 × 90 cm). Gardiner Chantry, Winchester Cathedral, England. Photo: Anne Baring.
I learned of this painting from the book The Image of Christ in Modern Art by Richard Harries. In the painting, Harries writes, Pilate is fierce, angular, aggressive, baring his teeth. “He represents the mechanism of law against Christ, now striated by the flagellation, and wearing a large crown of thorns. But Christ’s eyes are wide open, revealing a strong, serene and eternal order that remains untouched by the harshness.”
LISTEN: “Silencio,” movement 28 from La pasión según San Marcos (St. Mark’s Passion) by Osvaldo Golijov, 2000
The video below is the world premiere performance by the Orquesta La Pasión and the Schola Cantorum de Venezuela, conducted by María Guinand, on September 5, 2000, at the Beethovenhalle in Stuttgart, Germany. The “Silencio” movement is cued up for playback, but I recommend listening to the entire work!
Osvaldo Golijov(born 1960) is an Argentine composer born in La Plata to Ukrainian and Romanian Jewish parents. He left his native Argentina in 1983 to study for three years at the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem, and then he settled in the United States. He lives in Massachusetts.
Golijov was one of four composers commissioned by the International Bach Academy of Stuttgart in 1996 to write a Passion oratorio to commemorate the 250th anniversary of J. S. Bach’s death in 2000. (I featured another, Tan Dun, in a recent roundup.) Golijov chose Mark’s Gospel as his basis, compiling the libretto from a Spanish translation of the Gospel and other Spanish-language sources, and for the music, drawing on a variety of Latin American styles and rhythms.
The “Silencio” movement of Golijov’s La pasión según San Marcos captures the moment at which Christ stands before Pontius Pilate, the governor of the Roman province of Judaea. He had already appeared before Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest; now he’s been handed over to another authority to stand trial yet again.
Much to everyone’s surprise, he does not defend himself against the charges of sedition, treason, and blasphemy—not because he was guilty, but because he knew it would do no good. He had already told the people who he was and what he was there to do—had demonstrated it with miracles—but most of those in power continued to disbelieve and resist him. And so he returns their accusations with a dignified silence. He has purposed to take his gospel all the way to the cross to further reveal the heart of God.
“Silencio” (Silence), which comes between “Amanecer: Ante Pilato” (Dawn: Before Pilate) and “Sentencia” (Sentence), consists of clapping and stomping in the mode of flamenco, the texture thickening to convey ratcheting tension. “Spanish flamenco suggests the influence of the colonizing power, akin to ancient Rome in the Holy Land,” Thomas May writes, “and is thus suitable for Jesus’ betrayal and sentencing by the authorities – but also for the fatalistic aura of his impending death.”
There are no vocals in this movement, and the only instruments are the cajón and body percussion. The chorus creates rhythms with their hands and feet, representing the chief priests and scribes and the gathered crowds who wait anxiously for a word from the accused, but who are more anxious still for a verdict.
Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee and began to be grieved and agitated. Then he said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me.” And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, yet not what I want but what you want.”
In this artwork, the contemporary German artist Carola Faller-Barris has collaged to paper a photo cutout of a traditionally sculpted corpus of Christ from a crucifix, orienting him sideways as if he’s lying on the ground, his arms outstretched to the heavens. But he’s tangled in twine, representing the sin, hate, misunderstanding, and betrayal that have felled him, or else the oppressiveness of death, cutting holes through his hands and feet and restricting his movement. The words of the psalmist could be his:
The cords of death encompassed me; the torrents of perdition assailed me; the cords of Sheol entangled me; the snares of death confronted me. (Ps. 18:4–5)
Just prior to Gethsemane, Jesus had washed the feet of his disciples, signaled by the water bowl and draped cloth to his left. This action embodied his ethic of humble service and love. But one of the Twelve whom he washed betrayed him into the hands of his enemies. The blood-red color of the bowl is striking in this work that is otherwise just beige and gray, drawing our focus to the messianic model that God’s people, in demanding the crucifixion of the one God had sent (or abandoning him in his final hours), by and large rejected.
Christ is isolated in this work; no other figures are present, emphasizing the aloneness Christ felt in Gethsemane and on the cross. There’s not even a background—just a void that suggests the indeterminate space between life and death. By using Christ’s crucified form but titling the work Gethsemane, Faller-Barris collapses together Christ’s prayer on the Mount of Olives and his prayers at Calvary, both of which express an admixture of agony and surrender.
LISTEN: “In Passione positus Iesus” from De Passione D.N. Iesu Christi by Francisco Guerrero, 1555 | Performed by the Gesualdo Six, dir. Owain Park, 2021
In passione positus Jesus, cum pro nobis oblatus est, tremens ait: tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem vigilate mecum. Et factus est in agonia orabat dicens: Pater mi, si possibile est, transeat a me calix iste et clamans in cruce dicens:
Deus, Deus meus ut quid dereliquisti me in manus tuas Domine commendo Spiritum meum consummatum est.
English translation:
In his Passion, Jesus, when sacrificed for us, cried out, trembling: “My soul is sad unto death. Watch with me.” And in his agony, pleading, he said: “My Father, if it is possible, take this cup from me.”
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. It is finished.”
This sacred motet for five voices is by the Spanish Renaissance composer Francisco Guerrero. Written for Passiontide (the final two weeks of Lent), it quotes some of Jesus’s words from the garden of Gethsemane the night of his arrest, and then three of his seven sayings from the cross. Download the sheet music here.
The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit.
—John 12:23–24
Jesus spoke these words after his entry into Jerusalem to the acclamation of throngs, and then proceeded to prophesy his own death.
LOOK: Wheat Field by Ben Shahn
Ben Shahn (American, 1898–1969), Wheat Field, 1958. Photolithograph, 16 × 25 1/2 in. (40.7 × 64.7 cm).
This piece for violin and piano was commissioned by City Church Philadelphia (now Resurrection Philadelphia), where it premiered in March 2019. The recording features David Danel on violin and Bethany Danel Brooks on piano.
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Art & Theology 