Pieta – Art & Theology

Day Trip to Würzburg, Part 4: Museum für Franken

October 30, 2026November 5, 2026 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

This is the final post in my series on religious art highlights from Würzburg, Germany, which I visited on August 28. (See parts 1, 2, and 3.) It took me about fifty-two hours to organize, select, research, write, edit, and format all the content. If you enjoyed the series, would you please consider making a small donation toward this work so that I can avoid setting up paywalls? Thank you! Oh, and since some of you have asked: I offer all my high-resolution photos free of charge for noncommercial use; I just don’t allow reblogging (that is, reproducing these posts in full on a different website).

View from the Alte Mainbrücke (Old Main Bridge), with Festung Marienberg (Marienberg Fortress) in the distance

It was afternoon, and Eric and I had a few more hours left in Würzburg. Thankfully, the rain let up, so after a quick lunch of bratwurst, we trekked over the Old Main Bridge up to Marienberg Fortress. It was about a twenty-minute walk up the stepped Tellsteige to the entrance—quite strenuous for this out-of-shape traveler, and in retrospect, I should have taken the bus, which runs to the top via a different route, but at least I was rewarded with some lovely panoramic views of the city along the way.

Würzburg cityscape — View from the inclined walkway to the Museum für Franken. The red-spired Marienkapelle is on the left, Würzburg Cathedral (with its twin, bannered west towers) is on the right, and just right of center is the gray dome of Neumünster.

Serving as residence of the local prince-bishops from the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries, Marienberg Fortress now houses a collection of Franconian art from the Middle Ages to the Baroque era in its Museum für Franken (labeled “Lower Franconian Museum” in Google Maps and formerly called the Mainfränkisches Museum). Admission is five euros.

The sculptures of the German late Gothic artist Tilman Riemenschneider (ca. 1460–1531), who lived in Würzburg, are the main attraction of the museum, which owns eighty of them—the largest number of any institution. Riemenschneider was an absolute master of his craft, working in both wood and stone. Made to adorn buildings, his stone sculptures were conceived for particular architectural contexts, whereas most of his wood carvings were made for winged altarpieces. His smaller sculptures, by contrast, were intended for private ownership and worship.

In addition to being an artist, Riemenschneider was involved in local politics, serving on the Würzburg town council. During the German Peasants’ War in 1525, he refused to obey an order by Prince-Bishop Konrad von Thüngen to fight the revolting peasants, as he sympathized with their cause. As a result, most of his property was confiscated and he was incarcerated and tortured in Marienberg Fortress for two months. He received very little work for the remaining six years of his life.

The first work of his that I encountered at the Museum für Franken was an Anna Selbdritt, Middle High German for “Anne herself making a third”—an iconographic type that arose in Germany in the early thirteenth century and gained massive popularity throughout the Rhine-Meuse region in the next few centuries. Emphasizing the human lineage of Jesus, it shows three generations seated together: the matronly St. Anne (the name tradition ascribes to Mary’s mother), with her head and neck typically covered; a diminutive Mary, her hair uncovered to signify her virginal status, and often holding a book, signifying her learning and devoutness; and, toddling on his grandmother’s knee, the infant Christ.

Tilman Riemenschneider_Anna Selbdritt — Tilman Riemenschneider and workshop, *Anna Selbdritt*, ca. 1500. Limewood, traces of polychromy.

Here’s another:

A related subject, the Holy Kinship, showing even more of Jesus’s relatives gathered round, is also featured in the museum’s collection, such as in this fragment sculpted by an anonymous artist influenced by Riemenschneider, which shows Mary and Joseph on the left, and Anne and Joachim (Mary’s parents) on the right. The Christ child whom the young Mary used to hold on her lap is missing, as is the book that Anne once held:

Tilman Riemenschneider (circle)_Holy Kinship — Circle of Tilman Riemenschneider, *Parts of a Holy Kinship*, ca. 1505. Limewood, painted.

Jesus’s grandparents are never mentioned in scripture, so I admit, I had never even thought about them until I started seeing them depicted in Holy Kinship groups, and Anne in other contexts. It makes me wonder about how Mary’s mother raised her, and how that shaped the woman she became and how she then mothered Jesus. What lessons of faith did Mary learn from Anne? How did Anne react to the news of Mary being pregnant with the Messiah? What about Joachim? In what ways did Grandma and Grandpa dote on little Jesus? Did they have a nickname for him?

Of course Jesus was part of a larger family unit—extended family was very important in the ancient Near East—but without artists to turn my imagination toward that detail, I had neglected to consider it!

Beside the Anna Selbdritt sculpture is another by Riemenschneider, showing St. Stephen, who can be identified by the stack of stones on his knee. (In art, martyrs are often portrayed holding the instruments of their death.)

Tilman Riemenschneider_Saint Stephen — Tilman Riemenschneider and workshop, *Saint Stephen*, ca. 1520. Limewood, originally painted.

Here’s a handful of other works by Riemenschneider or his circle, from the permanent collection of the Museum für Franken or on long-term loan to them.

Tilman Riemenschneider_Adam — Tilman Riemenschneider, *Adam*, 1492–93. Gray sandstone. Former location: Würzburg Marienkapelle, left side of south portal.

Tilman Riemenschneider_Eve — Tilman Riemenschneider, *Eve*, 1492–93. Gray sandstone. Former location: Würzburg Marienkapelle, right side of south portal.

Tilman Riemenschneider_John the Baptist — Tilman Riemenschneider and workshop, *John the Baptist*, 1500–1506. Gray sandstone. Former location: Würzburg Marienkapelle, buttress to the right of the south portal.

Tilman Riemenschneider (circle)_Madonna and Child — Circle of Tilman Riemenschneider, *Madonna and Child on a Crescent Moon*, ca. 1515. Limewood, originally painted.

Tilman Riemenschneider_Crucifix — Tilman Riemenschneider, *Crucifix*, ca. 1500. Limewood, originally painted.

*Head of Christ*, plaster cast by Andreas Halbig, ca. 1850–60, after an original by Tilman Riemenschneider, 1497 (destroyed 1945)

Tilman Riemenschneider_Mourning Women — Tilman Riemenschneider, *Mourning Women* (fragment from a Lamentation group), ca. 1510. Limewood, originally painted.

Tilman Riemenschneider_Mourning Mary — Tilman Riemenschneider, *Mourning Mary*, from a Crucifixion group, ca. 1505. Limewood, originally painted. (The second layer of paint visible today follows the original color scheme.) Former location: Private house in Acholshausen near Ochsenfurt, original location unknown.

Tilman Riemenschneider_Pieta — Tilman Riemenschneider and workshop, *Vesperbild* (Pietà), ca. 1510. Limewood, originally painted.

And the remaining works below are by miscellaneous other artists from Franconia.

One high-relief wood carving shows the Adoration of the Magi. Look at Balthasar’s feathery headdress!

Another wood sculpture portrays the story from Luke 7:36–50, about the unnamed “sinful woman” anointing the feet of Jesus at the house of Simon the Pharisee, who was hosting a meal. Jesus commends the woman’s act of gratitude, costly love, and hospitality, much to Simon’s consternation. Throughout much of church history, this woman was identified as Mary Magdalene—a view almost all present-day biblical scholars reject. But I use the title the museum provides.

*Christ and Mary Magdalene at the House of Simon the Pharisee*, Franconia, ca. 1510

One of the most moving sculptures I saw shows Mary cradling her dead son in her lap, a devotional image type known in German as the Vesperbild (literally “evening picture”). This image type originated in Germany in the early 1300s, spreading throughout Europe, including, around 1400, Italy, where it took on the name Pietà, Italian for “pity” or “compassion.”

Another image type that originated in Germany is the Gnadenstuhl, variously translated as “Mercy Seat” or “Throne of Grace.” It depicts God the Father holding his crucified Son, with the Holy Spirit as dove in the middle—all three persons of the Trinity.

I plan to write a fully developed article on the Gnadenstuhl sometime in the future, as I’m fascinated by its theological implications, which, as I interpret it (and this is clearer in some versions than in others), run counter to a theology of Jesus’s God-forsakenness on the cross. What if, instead of conceptualizing the Crucifixion as an event in which the Father turned his face away from Christ, we saw the Father as with Christ, supporting and sustaining him, and suffering too? What if we saw the Crucifixion not as a temporary break in God’s triunity, the Father severing fellowship with the Son, the punisher versus the punished, but rather Christ on the cross as the object of the Father’s loving gaze, as he always had been? I have much more thinking and reading and consultation to do on this, as I want to be careful with my words. So for now I’ll share just this one example, and defer further theological discussion until another time.

This stone relief was originally located in the Bürgerspital zum Heiligen Geist (Citizens’ Hospital of the Holy Spirit) in Würzburg, founded in the early fourteenth century by Johann von Steren to provide shelter for the poor and treatment for the sick. Johann also endowed the hospital with vineyards that are maintained to this day, as is a public foundation, which operates senior citizens’ homes and a geriatric rehabilitation clinic. The founder is shown at the bottom left opposite his wife, Megardlis von Steren, their family coat of arms between them. On the middle level, flanking the cross, are Mary and the camel-hair-clad John the Baptist, interceding.

Here’s a (German-language) video the museum made about this Gnadenstuhl:

If you’ve been following my blog since Lent, you’ll recognize this next guy. It’s a Palmesel, literally “Palm Donkey,” mounted by a Christ figure, representing Christ’s entry into Jerusalem the week of his death. It’s not known which German town it comes from, but it would have been affixed to a wagon and wheeled through that town’s streets on Palm Sundays.

(See “The Palmesel (‘Palm Donkey’): A Holy Week Tradition from Medieval Germany.”)

The Museum für Franken majors in sculpture, minors in painting. One pair of paintings I really like is from an early sixteenth-century altarpiece depicting the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi. On the left, I love how an angel supports the head of Christ so that it’s not lying on the hard ground; he kneels, gently lifts that pudgy little noggin, and cushions it on his lap.

Nativity and Adoration of the Magi — *Nativity* and *Adoration of the Magi*, Franconia, ca. 1510. Wooden panel paintings, originally part of a winged altarpiece.

And lastly, another pair of altarpiece wings—depicting St. Margaret and St. Apollonia. The rest of the altarpiece was destroyed in 1945.

Margaret was an early fourth-century Christian martyr from Antioch of Pisidia. Her hagiography is pretty wild. The most famous legend associated with her is that, when she was in prison for refusing to renounce Christianity, she prayed that God would show her the enemy who was fighting her. Satan then appeared in the form of a dragon and swallowed her whole. But when she made the sign of the cross inside him, his belly burst open, and she escaped unscathed. She is traditionally shown holding a cross staff and standing atop or ripping through a dragon, imaging the triumph of good over evil.

St. Apollonia — Brother Martinus Schwarz, *Saint Apollonia* (altar wing), ca. 1485. Mixed media on softwood. Probably from a chapel in Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

Apollonia was a second-century Christian martyr from Alexandria whose torture included having all her teeth pulled out or shattered. That’s why she’s traditionally shown holding a set of pliers with a tooth in their grip, or, more rarely, a claw hammer. Here she holds both!

These two paintings are by Brother Martinus Schwarz, the guardian (superior) of the Franciscan monastery in Rothenburg ob der Tauber. On several occasions, he was enlisted by Riemenschneider to paint his sculptures.

I hope you enjoyed this little four-part travelogue. I received an earlier request to share more from my art-related travels (on average, I take an international trip every other year, and it always includes art!), including itineraries, and/or recommendations for religious art destinations. Any itinerary would need to take into account how long you have, who you’re traveling with, what your (and your traveling companions’) other interests are, and your budget. I have more stamina than most when it comes to structuring a day out in the city; others prefer a more leisurely pace, or have to adapt to the needs of young kids. In nine days, I toured Frankfurt, Würzburg, Rothenburg, Nuremburg, Munich, and (just over the border in Austria) Salzburg. The trip would have looked different if I were traveling with friends or parents or children.

If you’re interested in traveling to southern Germany and focusing on religious art, hit me up by email, and I’d be happy to share a list of the museums and churches I visited, and what I thought was worth it versus not.

If you’ve been to that region, or live there, feel free to share some of your favorite places or artworks in the Comment field below.

Day Trip to Würzburg, Part 3: St. Kilian’s Cathedral

October 27, 2026October 27, 2026 Victoria Emily Jones3 Comments

All photos in this post are my own.

In the Bavarian city of Würzburg, after visiting the Marienkapelle (part 1) and Neumünster (part 2), my husband Eric and I stepped over to the adjacent St. Kilian’s Cathedral, also referred to simply as Würzburg Cathedral (or Würzburger Dom in German).

Its namesake, Kilian, was a seventh-century Irish missionary bishop to the Germanic tribes of Franconia who was beheaded by Duchess Geilana after he denounced her marriage to Duke Gozbert, her late husband’s brother.

Because the cathedral tours are given only in German, I couldn’t take advantage, but the front desk helpfully offers a free brochure, available in multiple languages, that provides a brief construction history timeline, a map, and a partial list of artworks. I had no idea—though, given the heavy damage Würzburg sustained in World War II, I should have guessed—there would be so many modern and contemporary artworks inside!

The present cathedral, with its Romanesque cruciform layout, was built starting in 1042 and was consecrated in 1187. It underwent subsequent remodels (late Gothic, then Baroque) and then a major reconstruction following the collapse of its nave in a 1945 air raid, reopening in 1967.

The following is by no means a comprehensive accounting of the art inside, but rather a selection of works that stood out to me. You may notice my general disinterest in relics, tombs, and Baroque ornamentation.

I regret I didn’t get a photo of the bronze door designed by sculptor Fritz Koenig in 1964–67 for the main, west portal, featuring creation motifs! When church doors are propped open, they’re easy to miss.

The narthex of Würzburg Cathedral displays two neo-expressionist paintings of the Pietà by Peter Vogt, an artist associated with the southern German Neue Wilde movement of the late 1970s and ’80s.

Peter Vogt_Pieta — Peter Vogt (German, 1944–2013), *Pietà*, 1986, to your right when you enter Würzburg Cathedral

To your left when you enter, there’s a medieval sculpture group depicting the Dormition (the “falling sleep,” or death, of Mary) underneath an untitled contemporary painting by Marco Tirelli, a key member of the San Lorenzo School of painting and sculpture that formed in Rome in the 1980s. Tirelli is known for a “minimalist, atmospheric style . . . characterised by the use of geometric shapes, monochrome surfaces and subtle plays of light and shadow . . . often evok[ing] a sense of mystery and contemplation, inviting the viewer to reflect on the nature of perception and space.” His painting in Würzburg Cathedral shows some kind of linear object balancing on a pedestal. Created specifically for this location, it could suggest a body in repose.

Dormition (detail) — John the Evangelist mourning the death of Mary

Behind this wall is a semienclosed space designated for private prayer. According to an on-site sign, in the days following the destruction of Würzburg in 1945, the dead were gathered at this spot, where relatives would come to say their final goodbyes before burial. Appropriately, then, the focal point is a late Gothic wood sculpture of the Pietà, where Mary mourns the death of her son. These figures are seated atop a raised metal throne connected to a multitiered votive candle stand that shines with the prayers of the faithful.

Pieta with golden wall plate — *Pietà*, ca. 1410; golden wall plate by Jürgen Lenssen, 2012

The sculpture is foregrounded by a gilded wall panel designed by Dr. Jürgen Lenssen, who, in addition to serving as cathedral canon, was the art director for the Diocese of Würzburg from 1992 until his retirement in 2017. The wall plates in this space were part of the interior redesign carried out in 2011–12. I really like Lenssen’s interventions, which we will see more of in the crypt—highlighting historic works of art by adding dramatic backing, visual framing, and/or platforms.

Opposite the Pietà is a Russian icon of the Virgin Eleusa (Virgin of Tenderness), showing Mary affectionately holding the Christ child, who nestles into her cheek. It, too, is enhanced by a gold-leafed wall plate, one that frames it and extends the length of the row of chairs below, creating a sort of frieze.

Virgin of Tenderness icon — *Virgin of Tenderness*, Russian icon, 19th century; golden wall plate by Jürgen Lenssen, 2012

In art objects and sacred spaces, Pietà images are often juxtaposed with images of the Virgin and Child, as the very natural mother-infant pose gains additional poignancy when placed in conversation with the horrifically unnatural pose of a mother cradling her dead child.

Also in this prayer room is a cross made of three medieval roof-truss nails salvaged from the rubble of Coventry Cathedral in England, destroyed by German bombs on November 14, 1940. It is set into a remnant of a gravestone from Würzburg Cathedral.

The original Cross of Nails was made by Rev. Arthur Philip Wales of Coventry the morning after the Coventry Blitz, the nails bound together with wire. In the postwar years, following Wales’s concept, other recovered nails and roof spikes were welded together, plated with silver, and sent as a gift to cities in Germany that also suffered badly from World War II bombings—at the hands of the British—a gesture of reconciliation.

There are now nearly three hundred churches and organizations worldwide that own a Cross of Nails, either made with authentic hand-forged nails from the ruins of Coventry Cathedral or a replica, together forming a network dedicated to global peace and forgiveness. The Cross of Nails in Würzburg Cathedral is a replica, presented to the cathedral in 2015. (Two others, from 2001, are permanently housed in the city’s town hall and Marienkapelle, and a third travels to a new host location in the city each year.)

In the north (that is, left) aisle is a Crucifixion painting by Mimmo Paladino, a leading figure of the Transavanguardia (Transavantgarde) movement that swept through Italy in the late 1970s and ’80s, reviving figurative art.

Mimmo Paladino_Crucifixion — Mimmo Paladino (Italian, 1948–), *Crucifixion*, 2012

Executed in pale grays and yellows, this work portrays the crucified Christ without a cross, although he’s tied down near the elbows. He’s shadowy but appears bruised and scarred, his eyes half closed as he expires. In the background are pinned pages of thorny vines, disembodied parts (hands, feet, a face, a heart), and indistinguishable forms. This Crucifixion is similar to another one of Paladino’s, a triptych from 2010.

The painting projects out from the wall and appears to be the front face of a storage closet or a confessional—I couldn’t tell.

At the entrance to the nave, in the central aisle, is a monumental bronze menorah designed by the German metalsmith Andreas Moritz. It was commissioned to honor the Jewish roots of the Christian faith. “It reminds us that God planted the Torah like a tree of life for humankind,” Fr. Burkhard Hose said in a Lenten sermon at the cathedral in 2007. It was not lit when I was there—I wonder when or even if it ever is.

Andreas Moritz_Menorah — Andreas Moritz (German, 1901–1983), *Menorah*, 1981

On the north side of the nave, the nations come to Christ in a medieval Adoration of the Magi sculpture group that’s distributed across three pillars. Cathedral guide Rüdiger Seyler told me in an email, in response to my inquiry, that they were carved around 1300 in Germany and demonstrate French influence.

Across from Mary, Christ, and the eldest magus, in the center of the nave, is a bronze baptismal font made by Master Eckard of Worms in 1279. One of the cathedral’s most celebrated medieval treasures, it features eight scenes from the life of Christ, rendered in intricate relief.

Baptismal font by Master Eckard of Worms, 1279

Pentecost — The Descent of the Holy Spirit

In the south (that is, right) aisle are two detached frescoes from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. One shows Mary and John the Evangelist as intercessors. On a smaller scale beside them are two donors (the one on the right is rubbed out) holding scrolls with Latin inscriptions appealing to Christ. “O fili dei miserere mei” (O Son of God, have mercy on me), the woman prays. “Miserere mei deus,” the man similarly beseeches.

Christ with saints — *St. Catherine of Alexandria, the Virgin Mary, Christ as Man of Sorrows, and ?*, ca. 1380

There’s also a modern wood door depicting, in low relief, the Lamb of God in a cityscape in the top right corner (the cathedral guide says it’s the heavenly Jerusalem, but I wonder if it could be Nineveh), and in the lower left, the prophet Jonah being disgorged from the mouth of the whale.

Karl Schneider (German, 1911–1970), *Jonah*, 1967

Near the transept, to the left, is a wood sculpture of the Virgin and Child from the workshop of Tilman Riemenschneider. Mary is crowned and stepping on a crescent moon, associating her with the Woman of the Apocalypse in Revelation 12.

Tilman Riemenschneider_Virgin and Child — Workshop of Tilman Riemenschneider, *Virgin and Child*, ca. 1515, on a stele by Jürgen Lenssen, 2012

To the left of the high altar is a modern tabernacle, a fixed, locked receptacle in which consecrated hosts left over from the Eucharist are reserved. For me, the stone casing evokes the pillar of fire from the Old Testament, a symbol of God’s presence among his people.

Tabernacle by Albert Schilling, 1964–67 — Albert Schilling (Swiss, 1904–1987), *Tabernacle*, 1964–67

At the east end of the cathedral, the chancel area, designed by Hubert Elsässer in 1987–88, combines Baroque and modern elements in a representation of the New Jerusalem. It is anchored by a prominent stele by Elsässer that pictures the risen Christ in the middle of a gilded circle, its bottom circumference hugged by the tree of life. He is surrounded by angels and the twenty-four elders, and below him is the apocalyptic Lamb of God standing, “as if it had been slaughtered” (Rev. 5:6), before the twelve gates to the city, each bearing a giant pearl.

On the walls of the chancel are several trios of Frankish faith witnesses from the seventh to twentieth centuries, sculpted by Hubert Elsässer, Willi Grimm, Tilmar Hornung, Ernst Singer, and Lothar Forster. One group on the left depicts Sister Maria Julitta Ritz (1882–1966), a German Catholic nun, teacher, mystic, and spiritual adviser belonging to the Congregation of the Sisters of the Divine Redeemer in Würzburg; Blessed Marcel Callo (1921–1945), a French Catholic member of the Young Christian Workers who was deported to Germany in 1943 and died two years later in the Mauthausen concentration camp; and Sister Antonia Werr (1813–1868), founder of the Holy Childhood Sisters in Oberzell and a pioneer of the reintegration of women released from prison.

Witnesses in the New Jerusalem — Three witnesses in the New Jerusalem: Sr. Maria Julitta Ritz, CSR; Bl. Marcel Callo; Sr. Antonia Werr, OSF

Elsässer also carved the stone, lute-shaped Altar of Mary in the north transept, which centers, in the “soundboard,” a medieval sculpture of the Virgin and Child. What an evocative combination! Conceptually, it reminds me of a charming little quatrain by the seventeenth-century German Christian mystic Angelus Silesius:

Ein Herze das zu Grund
Gott still ist, wie er will,
Wird gern von ihm berührt—
Es ist sein Lautenspiel.

In other words, a heart that is still and hushed readily welcomes the touch of God, like a lute that invites music making. Once God touches the heart, it sings.

Hubert Elsässer (German, 1934–2009), *Altar of Mary*, 1967, with *Virgin and Child*, ca. 1420

The Indian mystic Kabir, who didn’t belong to a particular religious tradition, wrote something similar in the fourteenth century:

My friend, this body is His lute. He tightens the strings and plays its songs.

If the strings break and the pegs work loose, this lute, made of dust, returns to dust.

Kabir says: Nobody else can wake from it that heavenly music.

(trans. Stephen Mitchell, The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry)

In the equivalent spot in the south transept is the Apostle Altar by Helmut Weber, a thick, vertical stone framework that houses, cave-like, late medieval sculptures by Tilman Riemenschneider depicting Christ holding an orb that represents the world, Andrew holding a fragment of the X-shaped cross he was martyred on, and Peter holding a key (a reference to Matt. 16:19).

Helmut Weber (German, 1924–2012), *Apostle Altar*, 1966–67, with sculptures of Christ as Salvator Mundi, St. Andrew, and St. Peter by Tilman Riemenschneider, 1502–6

Unfortunately, there is an extension off the south transept that I missed: the Sepulture, a Gothic burial hall. (The door was closed, and I didn’t realize it could be opened; or perhaps the space was temporarily closed to visitors.) It contains, most notably, a 1956 stained glass cycle by Georg Meistermann depicting the seasons and holidays of the church year.

But back to the main body of the cathedral. Overhead, running down the length of the church, is a modern ceiling painting by Franz Nagel depicting the apocalyptic throne chariot vision that the prophet Ezekiel saw while living in exile in Babylon. The vision features bizarre cosmic imagery—wind and fire, a wheeled throne of God, four-faced hybrid creatures with wings, flashes of lightning, a shining crystal dome, eyes all over.

Franz Nagel (German, 1907–1976), *Vision of Ezekiel*, 1965–66, ceiling painting. Upper clerestory windows by Ludwig Schaffrath (German, 1924–2011), 1965.

Nagel also created the eighteen stained glass windows along the two side aisles, the cathedral guide told me—in a similarly abstract style.

Heading out to cloister, I passed through a bronze door by Heinrich Söller depicting the parable of the wise and foolish virgins.

Heinrich Söller_Wise and Foolish Virgins — Heinrich Söller (German, 1903–1997), *The Wise and Foolish Virgins*, 1967

The cloister contains several contemporary sculptures, including a bronze by Maria Lehnen.

Maria Lehnen_Dissolution — Maria Lehnen (German, 1949–2025), *In Auflösung* (Dissolution), 2005

Many of Lehnen’s works depict a human figure tightly bound in linen, rope, or bandages but in a state of growth and becoming, alluding to the often arduous process of transformation. Dissolution is no different. It shows the old self inside a cocoon, breaking down to make way for the new. The man lifts his eyes to the hills, whence cometh his help, his life. (I’ve seen photos of a similar sculpture by Lehnen from 2004, Großer Sitzender [Large Seated Man], aka Der Gefesselte [The Bound Man], seated on the steps outside the cathedral, but it wasn’t there when I was.)

Another striking work in the cloister is Andreas Kuhnlein’s oakwood Risen Christ.

Andreas Kuhnlein (German, 1953–), *Auferstandener* (Risen Christ), 2013–14

Kuhnlein uses a chainsaw to create rugged, life-size, figurative sculptures from uprooted, decaying trees, bringing the dead trunks to “life” by highlighting the protrusions, cuts, fractures, or grain patterns in the hardwood. At the blessing ceremony for the redesigned cloister in 2014, Bishop Dr. Friedhelm Hofmann said that the rough-hewn Risen Christ, bearing scorch marks from Kuhnlein’s aggressive motorized slicing, reminds him of the burning bush in which God revealed himself to Moses.

In the center of the courtyard (which, from what I could tell, does not admit entry) is a trio of biomorphic forms in Corten steel.

Herbert Mehler_Kavex — Herbert Mehler (German, 1949–), *Kavex*, 2006

The final section of the cathedral that I visited was the crypt below, divided into four rooms. In one side room there’s a small, square bronze relief of the Trinity, elevated in a simple, black wooden structure: the Father represented as a benevolent hand reaching down from the heavens; the Son as the incarnate Word, the infant Christ, seated in the lap of the woman who bore him into the world, and from whom he took his flesh; and the Holy Spirit as a dove.

Albert Schilling_Our Lady of the Trinity — Albert Schilling (Swiss, 1904–1987), *Notre Dame de la Trinité* (Our Lady of the Trinity), 1957. Housing by Jürgen Lenssen, 2012.

Against the wall are three large gestural paintings—inks on canvas—by Jacques Gassmann, on the theme of resurrection. In each, a pillar of light bursts up out of the ground, pushing aside the darkness.

Jacques Gassmann_Resurrection — Jacques Gassmann (German, 1963–), *Resurrection*, 2012

The other side room contains a set of Stations of the Cross paintings by Karl Clobes, plus a double-sided stand cross and a Picasso-esque wooden column carved with the likeness of Christ as the Man of Sorrows.

Friedrich Press_Man of Sorrows — Friedrich Press (German, 1904–1990), *Schmerzensmann* (Man of Sorrows), 1970

In a niche just outside is another Man of Sorrows sculpture by the same artist, this one in steel. Christ’s form is abstract and distorted. He bows his head, pierced by enormous thorns, at an impossible angle.

Friedrich Press_The Crown — Friedrich Press (German, 1904–1990), *Die Krone* (The Crown), 1984

The western crypt contains the oldest artwork in the cathedral: a stone cross with a head of Christ in the center, wearing, the brochure interprets, a faint smile. It was previously supposed to be Merovingian or Carolingian, but more recent studies date it later to around the year 1000, making it Ottonian.

Ottonian cross — Stone cross with softly smiling Christ, Ottonian, ca. 1000

Niches at the left and right entrance of this chapel combine old and new. At the left, a stylized, gold-plated cross by Jürgen Lenssen, contemporary but resembling a pre-Columbian artifact, sits atop a Romanesque stele preserved from the prebombed cathedral. And at the right, a sixteenth-century Italian Madonna and Child are perched on the top tier of a distinctively modern stele, also by Lenssen.

Madonna and Child — *Virgin and Child*, Italy, 16th century, with stele by Jürgen Lenssen, 2012

At one point while Eric and I were wandering about the cathedral, people were taking seats in the pews, and a man came out and gave some remarks in German. He was dressed nicely but not in liturgical vestments, so I figured it wasn’t a Mass. Since it was pouring rain outside, I was in no rush to reach my final Würzburg destination, so I decided to take a seat as well. When the speaker sat down, sonorous musical tones started issuing forth from the loft behind me. It turns out we were being treated to a lovely fifteen-minute organ concert. Here’s a snippet:

The Museum am Dom (Cathedral Museum) next door was closed for renovations when I was in Würzburg; it will reopen in summer 2028. The Domschatz (Cathedral Treasury), located inside the cathedral, was also closed to individuals, which was a shame.

Even so, Würzburg Cathedral offers many sights worth seeing—and at no cost! Having seen a photo only of the high altar prior to visiting, I was pleasantly surprised by the great variety of works inside.

Breton Pietà: A Woman Cradles Her Drowned Grandson

August 7, 2026 Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

All photos in this post are my own, taken in 2020 and 2024 (hence the different backgrounds).

Sarah Bernhardt was a popular French stage actress of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who performed internationally, primarily in dramatic roles.

Lesser known is that she was also an accomplished sculptor who exhibited at the Paris Salon and the Chicago World’s Fair, as well as in London, New York, and Philadelphia. She never went to art school, but she studied privately under Roland Mathieu Meusnier, and she had a studio in Montmartre.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, permanently displays Bernhardt’s most celebrated marble, Après la tempête (After the Storm), which shows a grieving grandmother cradling on her lap her dead grandson, who drowned in a fishing accident.

Bernhardt, Sarah_After the Storm — Sarah Bernhardt (French, 1844–1923), *Après la tempête* (After the Storm), ca. 1876. White marble, 29 1/2 × 24 × 23 in. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.

Full of pathos, the sculpture was inspired by a real-life tragedy Bernhardt witnessed while in Brittany. Seeing the older woman on the shore mourning, Bernhardt felt compelled to honor her story in stone—the love, the loss.

The composition deliberately evokes Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà, in which Mary holds the body of her son Jesus after his crucifixion.

Bernhardt, Sarah_After the Storm (detail)

(Related post: “A Breton Prayer”)

Stunned by what the winds and rains have taken from her, the grandmother looks down with disbelieving eyes and a partly open mouth to the limp body of the boy, maybe nine or so, she used to dandle on her knee, and whose innocent laughter rings fresh in her ears from just yesterday. Her cloak and chemise are blown from her shoulders, heightening her vulnerability.

Notice all the different textures Bernhardt renders from a single material: sand and surf, hair and skin, draped fabrics and coarse netting.

Although the boy on whom this figure is based did in fact die, here, his right hand clutches his grandmother’s garment, a sign of life, perhaps, suggesting that he may yet be revived.

After the Storm is a poignant lament whose sting, I’d imagine, is felt especially by those who know the pain of losing a grandchild, or any child in their life.

Christmas, Day 10: Love

January 3, 2026January 3, 2026 Victoria Emily Jones4 Comments

LOOK: The Life of Christ by Keith Haring

Haring, Keith_The Life of Christ — Keith Haring (American, 1958–1990), *The Life of Christ*, 1990. Bronze altarpiece with white gold leaf patina, 81 × 60 × 2 in. Edition of 9. Chapel of St. Columba, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York. All photos by Victoria Emily Jones.

Keith Haring [previously] was a popular artist and activist on the New York scene during the 1980s. Inspired by graffiti art, he started his career by filling empty poster spaces with chalk drawings in the city’s subway stations. He wanted to make art accessible to everyone and believed that it “should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination, and encourages people to go further.”

His style is characterized by bold black outlines, vibrant colors, a sense of rhythm, and simple iconic figures like the Barking Dog and Radiant Baby, which recur again and again in his oeuvre.

Sadly, Haring’s career was cut short by AIDS, which he died of on February 16, 1990, at age thirty-one. The last work he completed, just weeks before his death, was a Life of Christ altarpiece, a work that conveys eternal love and loss, divine suffering and hope. Without any preliminary sketches, he cut the design into clay using a loop knife. It was posthumously cast in bronze and covered in a white gold patina, an edition of nine.

The first edition is housed in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, the world’s fourth-largest church by area, where Haring’s memorial service was held.

Chapel of St. Columba, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, designed by the architectural firm Heins & LaFarge, dedicated 1911. The stained glass windows are by Wilbur Burnham of Boston and Clayton & Bell of London, and the altarpiece, a later addition, is by Keith Haring.

Pulsating, cosmic, and somehow both mournful and joyous, the altarpiece is a triptych, meaning it has three panels. The central panel shows, at the top, a cross, below which is a multiarmed figure holding a baby. The top figure I interpret as God the Father, his arms all-embracing. Below him, at torso level, I discern a second figure (though the head is not clearly defined), who must be Mary, a shining heart over her face. Nestled in her arms is, irrefutably, her infant son Jesus.

Another possible reading is that this is the Trinity—Father, Spirit, and Son—united in an act of self-giving.

The surplus of arms (I count thirteen, plus the baby’s two) reminds me of the Thousand-Armed Avalokiteśvara in Buddhism; a bodhisattva associated with limitless compassion, his arms represent his extending aid, his reaching out to touch, heal, and uplift. One of the arms here stretches down to bestow a halo on humankind, which in Christianity symbolizes the grace/light of God.

Below this primary grouping is a crowd of people who appear to me to be dancing and celebrating, lifting their arms to receive the blessings that flow forth from the holy child. (Or are they clamoring, turning away, resisting? Without facial features and fingers, it’s hard to tell!) Drops of Jesus’s blood fall over all, bringing redemption.

On the two side panels, angels careen down from the heavens, surfing, leaping, tumbling, one screeching to a halt.

Haring’s Life of Christ combines, as have many artworks before it, Jesus’s birth and death, collapsing his time on earth, his ministry of salvation, into a single image of incarnation and atonement. Mary holds him as a newborn, but she also holds him as a lifeless adult after his crucifixion—a traditional representation known as the Pietà. Many artists have given Mary a sad twinge in her eye at the nativity, suggesting a premonition of loss.

Haring’s figures are faceless, so we can’t look there for emotional clues, but Mary’s body language suggests both a desire to keep and protect her son, and a willingness to give him up for the greater good.

I wonder whether, when Haring incised the sacred blood drops, he was not only thinking of the “power in the blood” that Christians sing about in reference to Jesus’s redemptive sacrifice—and all the weight that bodily fluid as Christian symbol carries—but also lamenting the HIV infecting his own bloodstream, ravaging his body and stigmatizing him, and that had already killed many of his friends and his partner.

Haring’s friend Sam Havadtoy, who was present at the altar’s creation, reports that when Haring finished the piece, he stepped back and, gazing at it, said, “Man, this is really heavy.”

I think the prominence of blood must have been at least partly influenced by the destructiveness of the AIDS epidemic and the artist’s meditation on his mortality, perhaps even hope for transcendence through death. And if so, then the Radiant Baby, who, the artist’s title would lead us to assume, is Jesus, could also double as the soul of an AIDS victim being taken back up to God.

While I hesitate to ascribe prayers or intentions to others that they have not clearly voiced, I can’t help but think that this last artwork of Haring’s, executed in the final throes of his illness, its subject returning him to the Christianity of his youth, to a story that once captivated him, was in one sense a plea for (physical and spiritual?) cleansing, for deliverance.

LISTEN: “We Sing Glory” by Fred Hammond, on Fred Hammond Christmas . . . : Just Remember (2001)

Little baby boy, sent as God among us
For your plan to free all humanity
We sing glory to your name
Sing glory to your name

Tiny fragile heart
Pumped your blood to save us
For you’ve come to be a sin offering
Singing glory to the Lamb
Sing glory to the Lamb

Singing glory to the one
Who saved the whole world
Born to die but you live again
And take all our sins away

Little hands and feet
Made for nail and hammer
For the pain and grief you suffered for me
I sing glory to the Lamb
Oh, glory to the Lamb

Tiny arms and legs
Broad, strong, and sturdy
You carry the key to our victory
We sing glory to your name
We sing glory to your name

We sing glory to the Child
Who will save the whole world
Born to die and then live again
To take all our sins away

Glory, glory to the one
Who was born to save the whole world
You died but you’ll rise again
So Jesus, we praise your name

Hark the herald angels sing
Glory to the newborn King
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinner reconciled
Thank you, Jesus

Hark the herald angels sing
Glory to the newborn King
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God has come to save us
Yes, he has

Gloria in excelsis Deo
God has come to save us

Roundup: Ellsworth Kelly’s “Austin,” new book by Jonathan Anderson, religion in pop art, and more

May 15, 2025May 19, 2025 Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

PRINT INTERVIEWS:

>> “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.

>> “The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art: An interview with Jonathan A. Anderson” by Matthew J. Milliner: Jonathan Anderson [previously] is one of the most important people working across the disciplines of art and theology, and I’m thrilled that his book The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art is now available from the University of Notre Dame Press!

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:

15:22: Giotto, Mantegna, Adriaen van Overbeke, John Singleton Copley, etc.
22:17: Reidersche Tafel [previously], compared to a Byzantine manuscript illumination of Moses Receiving the Law (brilliant!)
30:53: Rabbula Gospels [previously] and a Coptic apse mural
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!
43:51: The Risen Christ (The Ascension) by Rebecca Dulcibella Orpen
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.

Frenken, Jacques_Spijkerpieta — 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.

Truijen, Hans_Stained glass — 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.

“Pietà” by Robert Fagles (poem)

March 18, 2025April 3, 2025 Victoria Emily Jones4 Comments

van Gogh, Vincent_Pieta — Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890), *Pietà (after Delacroix)*, 1889. Oil on canvas, 73 × 60.5 cm. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

“Poor fighter, poor sufferer,” 
my brother’s words for me.
                                                 Self-pity—
I have to beat it down. But how, exactly?
Never know when the next attack will come.
How to suppress religion?
Down the cloisters of the sick it beckoned—
I abused my God . . . that lithograph of Delacroix’s,
irredeemable sheets I flung in the paint and oil,
his Pietà in ruins.
                               Reconstruct it from memory.
Good technical exercise. Start with the hands,
there were four hands, four arms in the foreground—
mother and son, and the torsions of their bodies
almost impossible, draw them out—
painfully . . . no measurements—
into a great mutual gesture of despair.

Delacroix and I, we both discovered painting
when we no longer had breath or teeth.
Work into his work, strain for health,
the brain clearing, fingers firmer,
brush in the fingers going like a bow,
big bravura work—pure joy! I copy—
no, perform his masterwork of pain.

Genius of iridescent agony, Delacroix,
help me restore your lithograph with color.
I mortify before your model—
how to imitate my Christ? The bronze
of my forelock shadows his, the greatest artist:
stronger than all the others, spurning marble,
clay and paint, he worked in living flesh.

Living and yet immortal, Lord, revive me—
let me inhale the blue of Mary’s cape
billowing hurricanes of hope, clothe me
in your cerements gold with morning—
mother and son, from all your sorrow
all renewal springs, the earth you touch
turns emerald as your hand that burgeons green.

from I, Vincent: Poems from the Pictures of Van Gogh by Robert Fagles (Princeton University Press, 1978)

Robert Fagles (1933–2008) (PhD, Yale) was an award-winning American translator, poet, and academic. He is best known for his many translations of ancient Greek and Roman classics, especially the epic poems of Homer. He taught English and comparative literature at Princeton University from 1960 until his retirement in 2002, chairing the department from 1975 onward.

Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) was raised in the Dutch Reformed Church, the son of a small-town minister—and even worked himself as a lay preacher in the Borinage mining region of southwestern Belgium for two years in his mid-twenties. While there, he gave away all his possessions and lived in poverty like those he served, eating a spare diet, wearing rough garments, and sleeping on the floor. Ironically, his sponsoring evangelical committee deemed such behavior unbecoming of a minister of the gospel, and, due also to his lack of eloquence and theological refinement, they withdrew their support.

This rejection soured Vincent on institutional Christianity. But it didn’t squash his faith. After moving back in with his parents in Nuenen, the Netherlands, he wrote to his brother and close confidante, Theo:

Life [. . .] always turns towards one an infinitely meaningless, discouraging, dispiriting blank side on which there is nothing, any more than on a blank canvas.

But however meaningless and vain, however dead life appears, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, and who knows something, doesn’t let himself be fobbed off like that. He steps in and does something, and hangs on to that, in short, breaks, ‘violates’ – they say.

Let them talk, those cold theologians. [Letter 464]

Although Vincent left the church and developed conflicted feelings about the Bible, he maintained a reverence for Christ to the end of his days. His time in the Borinage was not for nothing, as it’s there that he discovered, through sketching his parishioners and the surrounding landscapes, his calling to be an artist.

This new vocation was one he ascribed metaphorically to Christ. In a letter to his friend and fellow artist Émile Bernard dated June 26, 1888, Vincent wrote that Jesus’s masterworks are human beings made fully and eternally alive:

Christ – alone – among all the philosophers, magicians, &c. declared eternal life – the endlessness of time, the non-existence of death – to be the principal certainty. The necessity and the raison d’être of serenity and devotion. Lived serenely as an artist greater than all artists – disdaining marble and clay and paint – working in LIVING FLESH. I.e. – this extraordinary artist, hardly conceivable with the obtuse instrument of our nervous and stupefied modern brains, made neither statues nor paintings nor even books . . . he states it loud and clear . . . he made . . . LIVING men, immortals. [Letter 632]

In the same letter, he contended that “the figure of Christ has been painted – as I feel it – only by Delacroix and by Rembrandt…….. And then Millet has painted…. Christ’s doctrine.”

These are the three artists Vincent admired most. He mentions them many times throughout his ample correspondence with family and friends, and he made paintings after all three.

The only painting Vincent ever made of Christ was his Pietà, which he painted in two versions in September 1889, both after the French artist Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863). These are among the many works Vincent painted at a psychiatric hospital in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in southern France, to which he had voluntarily committed himself after suffering an acute mental breakdown that resulted in his infamous severing of his left ear on December 23, 1888. Theo had rushed to Arles, where Vincent was living in “the Yellow House” at the time, and on December 28 reported on Vincent’s condition in a letter to his wife, Jo van Gogh-Bonger:

I found Vincent in the hospital in Arles. The people around him realized from his agitation that for the past few days he had been showing symptoms of that most dreadful illness, of madness, and an attack of fièvre chaude, when he injured himself with a razor, was the reason he was taken to hospital. Will he remain insane? The doctors think it possible, but daren’t yet say for certain. It should be apparent in a few days’ time when he is rested; then we will see whether he is lucid again. He seemed to be all right for a few minutes when I was with him, but lapsed shortly afterwards into his brooding about philosophy and theology. It was terribly sad being there, because from time to time all his grief would well up inside and he would try to weep, but couldn’t. Poor fighter and poor, poor sufferer. Nothing can be done to relieve his anguish now, but it is deep and hard for him to bear. [Letter 728]

Vincent returned to the Yellow House in January 1889 but over the next few months experienced recurring bouts of mania and depression and was in and out of the hospital. Some of the people of Arles grew increasingly frightened by his erratic behavior, and they essentially ran him out of town. That’s when he made his way twenty miles northeast to the town of Saint-Rémy to check in to Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, a former monastery that then, as now, served as a hospital for the mentally ill.

(Related post: “Three poems about Vincent van Gogh”)

Vincent had two rooms there, one of which he used as a studio, setting up the various print copies he owned of acclaimed paintings. One was a lithograph by Célestin François Nanteuil-Leboeuf after Delacroix’s Pietà, from the portfolio Les artistes anciens et modernes. (Theo had bought and sent him this litho at his request.) Vincent lamented to his brother that he accidentally damaged it with spilled paint—but that impelled him to paint his own copy of Delacroix. On September 10, 1889, he wrote:

Work is going very well, I’m finding things that I’ve sought in vain for years, and feeling that I always think of those words of Delacroix that you know, that he found painting when he had neither breath nor teeth left. Ah well, I myself with the mental illness I have, I think of so many other artists suffering mentally, and I tell myself that this doesn’t prevent one from practising the role of painter as if nothing had gone wrong.

[. . .] In the very suffering, religious thoughts sometimes console me a great deal. Thus this time during my illness a misfortune happened to me – that lithograph of Delacroix, the Pietà, with other sheets had fallen into some oil and paint and got spoiled.

I was sad about it – then in the meantime I occupied myself painting it, and you’ll see it one day, on a no. 5 or 6 canvas I’ve made a copy of it which I think has feeling. [. . .] My fingers [are] so sure that I drew that Delacroix Pietà without taking a single measurement, though there are those four outstretched hands and arms – gestures and bodily postures that aren’t exactly easy or simple. [Letter 801]

Pieta — LEFT: Eugène Delacroix, *Pietà*, ca. 1850, oil on canvas, 35.6 × 27 cm, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo. CENTER: Célestin François Nanteuil-Leboeuf, *Pietà (after Delacroix)*, 1853, lithograph, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. RIGHT: Vincent van Gogh, *Pietà (after Delacroix)*, 1889, oil on canvas, 42 × 34 cm, Vatican Museums.

The painted copy he refers to here is the smaller of the two, which he gifted to his sister Willemien and is now in the collection of the Vatican Museums in Vatican City. In another letter, from September 19, he tells Wil “this little copy of course has no value from any point of view,” but “you’ll be able to see in it that Delacroix doesn’t draw the features of a Mater Dolorosa [sorrowing Mother of God] in the manner of Roman statues – and that the pallid aspect, the lost, vague gaze of a person tired of being in anguish and in tears and keeping vigil is present in it.”

The other Pietà that Vincent painted—which is similar to the first but larger and brighter—he kept for himself, hanging it in his bedroom at Saint-Rémy. He describes the painting to Wil:

The Delacroix is a Pietà, i.e. a dead Christ with the Mater Dolorosa. The exhausted corpse lies bent forward on its left side at the entrance to a cave, its hands outstretched, and the woman stands behind. It’s an evening after the storm, and this desolate, blue-clad figure stands out – its flowing clothes blown about by the wind – against a sky in which violet clouds fringed with gold are floating. In a great gesture of despair she too is stretching out her empty arms, and one can see her hands, a working woman’s good, solid hands. With its flowing clothes this figure is almost as wide in extent as it’s tall. And as the dead man’s face is in shadow, the woman’s pale head stands out brightly against a cloud – an opposition which makes these two heads appear to be a dark flower with a pale flower, arranged expressly to bring them out better. [Letter 804]

Although Vincent may have at one time seen Delacroix’s Pietà painting in person, at Saint-Rémy he had only a grayscale image, the lithograph by Nanteuil-Leboeuf, to reference. For his version, he invented his own color scheme—bold blues and yellows.

On September 20, Vincent described to Theo his process of “copying,” or interpreting, the masters:

What I’m seeking in it, and why it seems good to me to copy them, I’m going to try to tell you. We painters are always asked to compose ourselves and to be nothing but composers.

Very well – but in music it isn’t so – and if such a person plays some Beethoven he’ll add his personal interpretation to it – in music, and then above all for singing – a composer’s interpretation is something, and it isn’t a hard and fast rule that only the composer plays his own compositions.

Good – since I’m above all ill at present, I’m trying to do something to console myself, for my own pleasure.

I place the black-and-white by Delacroix or Millet or after them in front of me as a subject. And then I improvise colour on it but, being me, not completely of course, but seeking memories of their paintings – but the memory, the vague consonance of colours that are in the same sentiment, if not right – that’s my own interpretation.

Heaps of people don’t copy. Heaps of others do copy – for me, I set myself to it by chance, and I find that it teaches and above all sometimes consoles.

So then my brush goes between my fingers as if it were a bow on the violin and absolutely for my pleasure. [Letter 805]

Some art historians believe the Christ figure in the painting is a self-portrait—Vincent identifying himself with the suffering Christ, or recognizing Christ’s presence with him in his suffering, and expressing his longing to be cradled in loving arms and for resurrection from the grave of psychosis. In Vincent van Gogh: The Complete Paintings, Ingo F. Walther and Rainer Metzger write,

Nothing could convey more clearly his need to record his own crisis in the features of another than these two copies [of Delacroix’s Pietà]. The face of the crucified Christ in the lap of a grieving Mary quite unambiguously has van Gogh’s own features. In other words, a ginger-haired Christ with a close-trimmed beard was now the perfect symbol of suffering, the (rather crude) encoding of van Gogh’s own Passion. The painter was to attempt this daring stroke once more, in his interpretation of Rembrandt’s The Raising of Lazarus. Here, van Gogh gave his own features to a Biblical figure who, like Christ, passed through Death into new Life. It was as if, in his work as a copyist, van Gogh was pursuing the kind of oblique allegory he disapproved of in Bernard and Gauguin [see Letter 823]. Five weeks of mental darkness demanded artistic expression – and even that incorrigible realist Vincent van Gogh could not be satisfied with landscape immediacy alone. (542)

On May 16, 1890, Vincent left the hospital at Saint-Rémy, bringing his Pietà painting with him. He moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, a suburb of Paris, placing himself under the care of the homeopathic doctor Paul Gachet, who became a friend. Dr. Gachet admired the painting very much and requested his own copy. (As far as we know, Vincent never got around to making one.)

Vincent was incredibly prolific in Auvers, but his mental health continued to decline, and he died a little over two months after relocating there, on July 29, 1890, from a gunshot wound to the lower chest that was likely self-inflicted.

In his poem “Pietà” from an ekphrastic collection based entirely on Vincent’s paintings, Robert Fagles draws on Vincent’s biography and letters in addition to the titular painting to voice the spiritual and emotional yearnings of Vincent’s final year. The last stanza is a prayer that the poetic speaker Vincent addresses to God—for hope, renewal, light:

Living and yet immortal, Lord, revive me—
let me inhale the blue of Mary’s cape
billowing hurricanes of hope, clothe me
in your cerements gold with morning—
mother and son, from all your sorrow
all renewal springs, the earth you touch
turns emerald as your hand that burgeons green.

In Vincent’s Pietà, the dead Christ’s limp hand rests on a grassy boulder or knoll, which Fagles reads as signifying life awakening from death. You can even see the green reflected in Christ’s face and chest, not to mention the golden sun (“after the storm,” as the historical Vincent wrote) glinting on his right arm, abdomen, and shroud, a faint promise of resurrection.

“Her Stations of the Cross” by Marjorie Maddox (poem)

September 15, 2023 Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

Kazanivska, Solomia_Mother of God — Solomia Kazanivska (Соломія Казанівська) (Ukrainian, 1996–), *Mother of God*, 2019. Acrylic and soil on wood, 60 × 40 cm.

I.
Here mothers move more than others
into Mary’s mourning, each chorus
a soul full of crosses, weighted
with her child dying
continuously in the contemplation 
of our contrition.

II. 
That once-upon-a-time angel’s voice
stretching anew her middle-aged womb,
she who once sang Magnify, O Magnify,
when all she screams for now
is mercy in her urgent rebirth
of sorrow.

III.
When he stumbles,
she cannot fix his fall,
cannot cradle the boyhood
scrapes and bruises bleeding
into crowd-sanctioned murder.
No cock crows; she hears his groans
as if the world’s bones
are splintering within her.

IV.
Besides the tree, he carries
the tears of the one who carried him
beneath her Eve ribs, lifted him
into a world he breathed as good,
gone now into this God-crucified-
as-her-son catastrophe
for salvation’s sake.

V. 
Simon of Cyrene stands close.
Understanding too well the two sorrows—
mother and son helpless to comfort the other—
he heaves up and shoulders
the burdens of both,
his back the black tablet
of Moses’ commandments fulfilled
to the jot and tittle.

VI. 
Veronica—eyes swollen
for the Madonna and Child
wrenched from their rightful honor—
lifts her veil to cool the Savior’s pain,
alleviate, however slightly, a mother’s anguish.

VII.
Thorns gouge the brow she stroked. 
The sweat-caked man that came out of her 
stumbles again. Already,
the sharp nails gnaw her own palms.

VIII.
Oh, daughters of Jerusalem,
your tears sweep the streets,
wet the weary soles of Mary.
Weep for your own children
forever dashing away from Yahweh.

IX.
Wretched stones that tip her sinless child,
dirt that drives down the innocent son.
His own earth hurts him more each tumble.
Three times he trips,
crashes to the dust we are,
mortal muscles turning their backs
on Man and his Mother.

X. 
Threads twisted by her own fingers,
tugged carefully through cloth:
this is the tunic they rip from him,
fabric tattooed with red;
she remembers his baby body
blood-splattered and matted.

XI. 
Her soul stabbed by the tree
that slays her son. Her heart nailed.
She swears his life spurts
from her barely breathing body.

XII.
Death is indigo and indelible, 
the Roman sky collapsed and re-scribbled
on the shreds of her memories.
She cannot bear to look upon his face
when breath forgets its maker.

XIII.
Ten thousand stillborns better
than this: his torso in her arms, 
icon of the inconsolable,
the flesh Pietà with its nails of pain, 
pounding, pounding. 

XIV.
The hewn tomb seals her grief.
She remembers his first words,
his final prayer. All else rots
within her. They swaddle him,
implant him quickly behind stone.

This poem is from Weeknights at the Cathedral (Cincinnati: WordTech Communications, 2006) and is anthologized in slightly revised form, as here, in Poems of Devotion: An Anthology of Recent Poets, ed. Luke Hankins (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012). Used by permission of the author.

Note: The Stations of the Cross are a form of Catholic devotion organized around the events of Christ’s passion, from his condemnation by Pilate to his crucifixion and burial.

Marjorie Maddox (born 1959) is the author of fourteen poetry collections, including Begin with a Question (Paraclete, 2022); Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation from the Poiema Poetry Series (Wipf & Stock, 2018); and True, False, None of the Above (Wipf & Stock, 2016). She has also published a short story collection, four children’s and YA books, and 650-plus stories, essays, and poems in journals and anthologies. Living in Central Pennsylvania, she is a professor of English and creative writing at Lock Haven University and is the assistant editor of Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry.

Christmas, Day 10

January 3, 2022 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

LOOK: The Passion of Mary by Katherine Kenny Bayly

Bayly, Katherine_The Passion of Mary — Katherine Kenny Bayly (American, 1945–), *The Passion of Mary*, before 2006. Collage on paper, 8 × 12 in.

This collage by Katherine Bayly is from the 2006 CIVA traveling exhibition Highly Favored: Contemporary Images of the Virgin Mary. In seven alternating vertical bands, it combines Michelangelo’s Pietà from St. Peter’s Basilica with a Virgin and Child painting by Laurent de La Hyre, showing Christ’s birth and death as two sides of the Incarnation coin. One can hear echoes of Simeon’s prophecy to Mary, that “a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Luke 2:35)—a veiled reference to the Crucifixion.

Since the Middle Ages artists have often embedded symbolic or other visual references to Christ’s passion in Nativity paintings—a goldfinch, a coral rosary, a bunch of grapes, a cave that recalls the tomb, swaddling bands that look like burial wrappings, a manger that looks like a sarcophagus or altar, or, more explicitly, angels holding the arma Christi (instruments of the passion). Sometimes artists would use a diptych format to juxtapose images of Mary holding Jesus as a vibrant young infant with her holding him as a pale adult corpse deposed from the cross, a pairing that strikes an emotional tenor, as there’s perhaps no deeper grief than a mother’s loss of a child. Bayly draws on this tradition in The Passion of Mary, foreshadowing a future sorrow and reminding us that Christ came to earth not only to live but also to die.

LISTEN: “Baby Boy” by Rhiannon Giddens, on Freedom Highway (2017)

Baby boy, baby boy, don’t you weep
Baby boy, baby boy, don’t you weep
You will be our savior
But until then, go to sleep
Young man, young man, I’ll watch over you
Young man, young man, I’ll watch over you
While you lead our people to the promised land
I will shelter you
Baby boy (Young man)
Baby boy (Young man)
Don’t you weep (I will watch over you)
Baby boy (Young man)
Baby boy (Young man)
Don’t you weep (I will watch over you)
You will be (You will be)
Our savior
But until then, go to sleep
Beloved, beloved, I will stand by you
Beloved, beloved, I will stand by you
When you leave this place to do what you must
I will always love you
Baby boy (Young man) (Beloved)
Baby boy (Young man) (Beloved)
Don’t you weep (I will watch over you) (I will stand by you)
Baby boy (Young man) (Beloved)
Baby boy (Young man) (Beloved)
Don’t you weep (I will watch over you) (I will stand by you)
You will be (You will be)
Our savior
But until then, go to sleep

Poignantly performed by Rhiannon Giddens [previously], Lalenja Harrington, and Leyla McCalla, “Baby Boy” is a lullaby written in the voice of a mother to her son, her salvation, whom she sings to sleep. She pledges to always watch over, shelter, and support him to the best of her ability.

The subject of the song could be Moses and the speaker his birth mother, Jochebed, as there’s mention of him leading his people to the promised land. This boy will grow up to shepherd a nation into its rest.

Or it could be Jesus, the New Moses, who liberated humanity at large, breaking their bondage to the powers of evil. Remembering the angel’s promise, Mary whispers her grand hopes to this cuddly little bundle she holds who will be their fulfillment, even as she shushes his cries.

Note, though, how there are three voices singing—a trio of women, a sisterhood united in their love of this child and their eager expectation of deliverance. Think of the women who, against all odds, ensured Moses’s protection as a young one and those who later walked alongside him in his difficult calling. Think, too, of all the women who supported Christ throughout his ministry, materially and spiritually, standing by him until the end, mourning his death, and spreading the news of his resurrection. One might imagine this song being sung by the three Marys, for example. They have a faint sense of the danger ahead and know the hero Jesus will become, but for now, they simply wish him sound slumber and sweet dreams. “Until then . . .”

New book: Parallel Universes of Children by Uğur Gallenkuş

November 16, 2020 Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

Warning: This post contains distressing photographs, including one of an emaciated child and one of a wounded (but bandaged) infant.

Uğur Gallenkuş (Turkish, 1990–) is an Istanbul-based artist whose digital photomontages address the widening global divide between the privileged and the oppressed. By combining photojournalistic images and stock photos with similar compositional elements, he juxtaposes the relative safety, stability, comfort, and flourishing experienced by middle- and upper-class Westerners with the violence, terror, trauma, and hardship experienced by victims of poverty, war, and displacement. Because Gallenkuş lives in the Middle East, he focuses on that geographic region.

Releasing November 20 in honor of World Children’s Day, Parallel Universes of Children brings together fifty of Gallenkuş’s sobering mash-ups, integrating facts of children’s lived realities around the world. It is $60 plus shipping, available only through the artist’s website. (For US buyers, there’s stock warehoused in New Jersey, so you won’t be paying to ship it from Turkey.)

“I aim to create awareness and inspire action to remember and to ask ourselves every day what we have done to safeguard children’s rights, both near home and across the globe,” Gallenkuş says. He wants not only to alert the well-off to the suffering they often shield themselves from, shaking them out of their complacency, but also to remind those in underdeveloped countries that they deserve better government and education, the right to thrive.

I’ve linked each image to its source on Instagram, where you can find out more information about it—when and where the photograph was taken and by whom (Gallenkuş does not take the photos himself), context, stats, etc. Some of the links will take you to a revised (updated) form of the image; in those instances, the originals I found at Juxtapoze.

The stark contrast between the two component photos of each montage is jolting, intentionally so. Reflecting socioeconomic and political disparities, they tell drastically different stories about childhood. My existence must look like a fairy tale to those who have grown up in war zones or refugee camps.

One of Gallenkuş’s montages shows a lavish bathroom with a chandelier, pristine tiles, and freshly pressed towels next to the remnants of a bathroom whose walls were blown out by an Israeli airstrike, where a father bathes his daughter and niece.

Another one shows a line of American schoolchildren waiting to board a bus, which transforms into a line of Palestinian children waiting to fill jerrycans and bottles with drinking water from public taps at the Deir al-Balah refugee camp in central Gaza Strip. (Many fall sick from the water, whose source is polluted with human waste.)

Consider, too, the differences in play. A child at an IDP camp plays with a toy grenade launcher, while his counterpart plays doctor. A Syrian boy has fun balancing on the barrel of a tank in a pile of wreckage, while opposite him, in a green park, a boy rides a harmless seesaw. The imaginations of children are shaped by what surrounds them, whether that be violence or possibility.

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Roundup: Colorado trip; Maori hymn; Dutch tulip fields by aerial video; the magic of childhood; and more

May 4, 2019April 20, 2022 Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

I returned this week from a wonderful arts conference/retreat in the Colorado mountains, a much-needed time to unplug from work and engage with nature, to meet and worship with other Christians from around the country, and to reaffirm my sense of calling to online arts ministry. Eric came with me, so we took a few extra days there for scenic walks and drives, which included the Peak-to-Peak Scenic Byway, the Flatirons, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, Pikes Peak, and Garden of the Gods. So much beauty! Here’s a charming little stone church we spotted outside Estes Park, built in 1939.

Chapel on the Rock (Colorado) — Chapel on the Rock (Saint Catherine of Siena Roman Catholic Chapel), Saint Malo Retreat Center, Allenspark, Colorado. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.

We also visited the Cadet Chapel at the United States Air Force Academy, which I will share about in a separate post.

And as is my practice whenever I visit a new city, I spent time at a local art museum: the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College. The size and quality of its collection exceeded my expectations, with many fine works of Native American (Pueblo, Plains, Plateau, and Great Basin), Hispanic and Spanish colonial, and twentieth-century American art. I particularly loved the santos galleries, which feature religious folk art of the Southwest, including two monumental altarpieces. Below is a retablo (panel painting) and a bulto (sculpture) from the santos tradition.

Aragon, Jose Rafael_Cristo (Crucifixion) — José Rafael Aragón (New Mexican, ca. 1796–1867), *Cristo* (Crucifixion), ca. 1820–35. Tempera on gessoed pine, 19 × 11 in. Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.

Barela, Patrocinio_Announcement of the Birth of Jesus — Patrociño Barela (New Mexican, 1902–1964), *Anuncio de la Nacimiento de Jesus* (Announcement of the Birth of Jesus), 1942. Cedar wood. Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.

José Rafael Aragón is the most highly regarded classic santero from early New Mexico, so I was already familiar with his work (note the visual influences on contemporary santero Vicente Telles, one of whose Crucifixion retablos I own). The chandeliers in Aragón’s painting are like those found in the chancels of New Mexico churches, and the vertical branches that fill the spaces between the figures are also standard elements of church decoration.

Patrociño Barela I was not previously familiar with, and I found myself so captivated by his work. (If you are too, be sure to check out this online solo show of his.) I’m not sure whether to interpret his Anuncio de la Nacimiento de Jesus as an Annunciation image, with Gabriel announcing Christ’s conception to Mary, or a Nativity image, seeing as the babe appears to be ex utero—in which case the top figure could be either an angel or God the Father. I can’t identify the object Mary is holding. (A piece of fruit?)

Lastly, here’s a unique Pietà image by the modernist painter Marsden Hartley. Could that be God the Father supporting Christ deposed from the cross? Maybe it’s Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea, but I rather like the thought that the Father held his Son in love during this time of his immense suffering and death.

Hartley, Marsden_Christ Evicted — Marsden Hartley (American, 1877–1943), *Christ Evicted*, 1941–43. Oil on board, 47 × 20 in. Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.

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EVENING DISCUSSION: “Idols and Taboos: Modern and Contemporary Art and Theology Today”: This free public event, consisting of two lectures and a panel discussion, will take place May 23, 2019, at 6 p.m. at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The presenters are James Elkins, who will be discussing the distance between avowedly religious art and the disciplines of art history, art criticism, art theory, and studio pedagogy, and Thomas Crow, who will be discussing “the generally inverse relationship between grandiosity in a work of art and its intrinsic theological import,” as well as art’s susceptibility to idolatry. A panel discussion will follow, moderated by Professor Ben Quash, and all are invited to gather afterward in the Lobby Bar of the historic Palmer House (across the street) for further socializing and conversation.

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SONG: “O Death”: This Easter, CCLI released a video of Kaden Slay, Melanie Tierce-Slay, and Ryan Kennedy of People & Songs performing Stephen Marti’s “O Death,” written in 2017. Those three-part a cappella harmonies are so sweet.

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SONG: “How Great Thou Art / Whakaaria Mai”: On March 23, the Grammy Award–winning singer-songwriter John Mayer began an extensive world tour at Spark Arena in Auckland, New Zealand. He opened the show quite unexpectedly with “How Great Thou Art,” a tribute to those killed and injured during a terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15. [HT: Global Christian Worship]

Standing center stage for the opening was Te Wehi Haka, a Maori performing arts troupe who, to begin with, quivered their hands; known as wiri, this important Maori movement represents the world around us, from the shimmering of water on sunny days to heat waves rising from the ground to wind rustling the leaves of trees. Continue reading “Roundup: Colorado trip; Maori hymn; Dutch tulip fields by aerial video; the magic of childhood; and more” →