This is so tempting — “Spontaneous Hooky,” ala MinnPost. Stop what you’re doing this afternoon and get down to MNartists.org Field Day at the Minneapolis sculpture garden (it starts in 39 minutes!). So much more interesting than anything else you’re doing right now, like working at a desk. And if you go, take a moment to appreciate the Basilica’s mansard dome on the skyline. Pretty impressive, if you ask me.
Summer at least has the reputation of being this lazy season of laying by the lake, reading paperbacks and consuming copious amounts of barbecue. But, as you and I know, summer is a liar, because the only thing I’ve had in that list is a copious amount of barbecue, and that was a lot of work to prepare.
Now, like every good Minnesotan who suddenly realizes it’s August and the impending gloom of winter is glowing on the horizon, I’m looking back on these few months of warm-weather bliss and wondering where it all went.
Unlike most good Minnesotans, I can tell you exactly where it went: to researching and writing papers for my summer graduate school class and internship.
Yes, I spent summer inside a library.
However, should the day ever come that something called “reading for fun” is part of my life again ( I have a vague memory of this from my high school years), I’m going to pick up this book that Dan Browning reviewed in the StarTribune. It’s called “Priceless: How I went Undercover to Rescue to World’s Stolen Treasures” by Robert K. Wittman, and Browning describes it as exactly the kind of book you’d want to read lying by the lake.
It’s not just about art and artifacts. It’s a memoir about (FBI agent) Wittman’s experience, and it’s apparently hard hitting on the the federal investigative agencies, and it also explores the racial prejudice the author, who has a Japanese mother, felt after WWII.
It was this graph in the review that piqued my interest, however:
Hollywood depicts art thieves as debonair cat burglars — think Cary Grant in “To Catch a Thief” — or as techno-sleuths — Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones in “Entrapment” come to mind. “Priceless” introduces the reader to some thieves like that, but also to simple fools who snatched an opportunity. The one thing that ties them together, Wittman writes, is “brute greed.”
“They stole for money, not beauty,” he said.
What? An unromantic heist? Could it be? Either way, this one looks worth a read.
If you pick it up, let me know how it turned out. I’ll be in the library.
Lakewood Cemetery Chapel, Minneapolis
Umm, the answer is probably yes. But, as readers of the published version of Artfully know, it’s true. The Lakewood Cemetery memorial chapel is — probably unarguably — the best example of mosaic work this side of the Atlantic. It’s like standing inside a treasure chest, with all these glittering pieces of copper and glass shifting hues throughout the day. It is simply stunning. I love it so much that my fiance considered it as a site for our proposal — but then he reconsidered. A cemetery? Really? How morbid.
But maybe not. We’re signing on ’till death do us part, right? (He ended up proposing by a lake.)
Anyway, since we only have a couple months of nice weather left here in Minnesota (speaking of morbid), I’m reposting a a column that ran last year in The Catholic Spirit about my love for this chapel. Maybe it will inspire some local readers to spend some waning summer evening admiring this hidden gem that so many more should stop to see.
—
Minneapolis cemetery holds hidden gem
For the better part of three years, I’ve been trying to get my friends — even just one of them — to visit what I consider one of the Twin Cities’ best architectural treasures.
They always refuse.
“But it’s a 100-year-old chapel,” I add, trying to appeal to their love of history and religion.
But so far, it’s a no-go. The problem, they tell me, is that it’s in a cemetery.
However macabre its location, the chapel makes up in beauty what it may lack in address appeal.
I first visited the Lakewood Ceme tery chapel as an undergraduate student with a summer research project involving, in part, eastern orthodox-influenced sacred space. This tiny 200-seat chapel in Minneapolis was modeled after the Hagia Sophia, which was built in then-Constan tinople around 535 by the Byzan tine emperor Justinian. With its soaring arches and a low central dome, the Hagia Sophia was the greatest Christian cathedral in its time and is still an architectural marvel today.
When the Hagia Sophia was completed, it also claimed boasting rights to pretty impressive mosaics. The walls and ceilings of the huge church were covered with golden tiles called “tesserae,” and the effect was so dazzling that Justinian, who wasn’t known for his humility, is purported to have said, “Solomon, I have outdone thee!”
However, although the building still stands, today’s visitors shouldn’t expect an experience akin to standing in a jewel box, as the Hagia Sophia’s first visitors did. Most of the mosaics have been destroyed over the years by heretics and Muslim invaders.
When I visited a few years ago, I stood in the balcony overlooking the apse and tried to imagine what it would have looked like when it was first built. Light must have danced over the entire interior, reflecting from each tesserae and making the church shine from within. Today, with its peeling paint and dusty corners, the Hagia Sophia seems dull when compared to the brilliance it once knew.
Unexpected gem
However, the unexpected gem in Lakewood Cemetery gives me a glimpse of what the Hagia Sophia would have been like. When local architect Harry Wild Jones completed the chapel in 1910, the interior of the small domed structure was solely brick and led at least one person to criticize it for resembling a railway station. New York architect Charles Lamb finished the job, designing Byzantine mosaics for the interior. Many consider these mosaics to be the finest example of Byzantine mosaic art in America.
At the time of its completion, it was the only American building to have a completely mosaic interior. Six Italian artists who had worked for the Vatican were brought to Lakewood to create the mosaics. The tesserae were created in Venice and affixed to gummed cloth for overseas transporting. It took the mosaicists three years to set the millions of small tiles to their present designs and images, and the artistry is beyond impressive.
Appropriate to its location, the mosaics’ subjects subtly allude to death. Although Lamb designed the chapel for use by people of all faiths, the symbolism draws heavily from Christianity, such as in the use of a peacock, which was used by early Christians to symbolize resurrection and life after death.
The words “Until the day break and the shadows flee away,” from the Song of Solomon, encircle the dome’s base. Mosaics of olive tress display leaves of varying colors for the cycle of seasons and the passing of time. The chapel itself is an instrument in which to count the days; the 24 windows around the dome represent the hours of the day and behave as a sundial with which one could tell the time of day and year.
‘Heaven on earth’
Both the Hagia Sophia and the Lakewood Chapel are reminders of the fleetingness of time. Once the most glorious structure in Christianity, the Hagia Sophia has lost, irrevocably, the interior brilliance with which it was created. The Lakewood Chapel, though in pristine condition, is a monument to death and the hope of eternal life.
According to legend, when the Russian explorers came upon the Hagia Sophia at the end of the first millennium, they described it as heaven on earth, and appropriately so. It — and all earthly beauty — is merely a foreshadowing of things to come.
A statue of Cardinal James Gibbons is seen through the trees in a small public plaza in Washington Aug. 6. The son of Irish immigrants, Cardinal Gibbons served as archbishop of Baltimore from 1877 until his death in 1921. He wrote the popular treatise "T he Faith of Our Fathers," a defense of the Catholic faith. (CNS photo/Nancy Wiechec)
Funny today, when, after spending my weekend paging through stacks of books on the relationship between two American Catholic monuments and their role in their civic societies that Catholic New Service would feature this story.
It looks at the statues and symbols of Catholicism scattered around Washington, D.C., like the statues of St. Damien de Veuster and Blessed Junipero Serra, who symbolize Hawaii and California, respectfully, in the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall.
The story focuses on the role of Knights of Columbus played in creating Catholic institutions of learning and worship, like Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law and the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
However it also addresses the role of religious art in DC broadly. The writer interviewed Father Eugene Hemirck, who published “One Nation Under God” in 2001 on the religious symbolism found in Washington, D.C. (It’s already on my Amazon wish list.) The story goes on to say:
There are all kinds of religious symbols integrated in the art, architecture and statues in the capital, according to Father Hemrick.
“They are inscribed in halls, painted on ceilings, represented in wall panels, enshrined in lunettes, and pieced together in mosaics,” he wrote in his book.
When asked the motives people have for contributing to public memorials, he said sometimes it is to reconcile America’s past mistakes or to honor influential people who have helped shape our nation.
While this is certainly true, and it is also the case that many of America’s founders held Christian beliefs, and that the artists were Christians as well, this also points to the idea of civil religion, a sociological phenomenon best explained by Robert Bellah. In one of his famous essays, Bellah points out that although our nation’s founders often referred to God, or Providence, or the Creator, they never refer to Jesus Christ, even if they themselves were Christian. Unlike today, when such a generic term might be used so that Americans of non-Christian faiths do not feel discrimination, this was not the purpose of this rhetoric. Rather, the god described by our nation’s leaders from President Washington through JFK to this present day is one concerned with virtue, social action, and abiding by right law — and not so interested in mercy, compassion and meditative prayer. In sum, it’s a god who fits America’s progressive, active vision, which may be a distortion of the God who actually Is. Whether you buy it or not, Bellah’s a fascinating read.
Anyway, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time in D.C. these past months, and I plan be spending quite a bit more in the future, so I’ll have to be on the lookout for these religious representations as I go about town. The city was a forerunner in the City Beautiful movement, which promoted the building of classically inspired (European like) monuments as a means for encouraging citizens to act in a virtuous manner.
Tuesday’s New York Times ran a piece on two art historians’ quest to restore “old-fashioned connoisseurship” among art historians. As a graduate student of art history myself, I give a hearty “hear hear” to their cry.
From the story:
“Art history has been hijacked by other disciplines,” said Mr. Kanter, who teaches a connoisseurship seminar to Yale graduate students. “Original works of art have been forgotten. They’re being used as data, without any sense of whether they’re good, bad or indifferent.”
He added: “No one wants to turn art history back 150 years. But we’re lacking an important tool that we threw out the window 70 years ago.”
The outspoken Mr. Feigen, who graduated from Yale in 1952, went further. “There isn’t a single art history department in the world that I consider first-class,” he said, as he toured the exhibition earlier this year. “I’m hoping Yale will develop a focus on objects instead of theories.”
The idea is a simple one: If Mr. Feigen can spot Fra Angelico-level quality by closely looking at art with his well-trained eye, perhaps students too one day can learn to tell gold from dross.
Mr. Kanter and Mr. Feigen do have allies in their cause, though it is a small club, many of whose members are white, male and over 40.
“It’s not uncommon to encounter bright students who are able to express the most abstract ideas with ease and who, when faced with actual works of art, are tongue-tied,” said Keith Christiansen, a curator of European paintings at the Met and Mr. Kanter’s former colleague there. “Connoisseurship needs to form an alliance with the very academic approach. They inform each other.”
Like most (all?) graduate art history students, I took a required theory class my first semester, and now I regularly apply some aspect of some theoretician’s thought to my own research. However, I totally agree that this doesn’t promote an intimacy with art itself — in fact, theories can exhaust the art, boiling it down to semiotic mush. Recently, I wrote on frescoes in San Clemente in Rome depicting St. Catherine of Alexandria attributed to Renaissance painter Masolino da Panicale. It was clear from my research that the verdict is still out whether or not these were Masolino’s works for certain, or whether they could be attributed to his teacher Masaccio. Frankly, as a graduate student focusing on architecture, and not Renaissance frescoes, I don’t feel qualified to make my own judgement, but it illustrates the need for connoisseurship — someone has to have the skills to decipher the difference between a master and his student, and if it’s not the historian, who will it be? Students of art history need to get out of the classroom and into the museums, churches and private collection to see the art itself, and spend time in studios of artists who have mastered the craft.
Mastering feminist theory, hermeneutics or iconographic analysis is not knowing art. To put our focus there, as we have for decades now, means we risk missing both the trees and the forest.
Chapel of the Rosary
Okay, I’ll admit it. I’ve been through the Vatican Museums several times, and only once have I actually taken time to go through the modern and contemporary art rooms (and that’s because my cousin wanted to). As a student of art history, I reveal this with a tinge of guilt. But, the contemporary rooms are at the end of the museum, right before the Sistine Chapel, and after the absolutely overwhelming experience of wandering through these incredible rooms with a ridiculous amount of art, my brain just cannot handle it anymore. There is nothing in me that can try to interpret some abstract piece. At that point, all I see is paint.
However, next time I’m in Rome, I think I’ll try to save some energy.
The museums are devoting one room to Henri Matisse, the French artist responsible for some wildly colorful paintings, like Woman With a Hat. His Boy with Butterfly Net can be found locally at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
Matisse was Catholic, and although little of his work is religious, he designed the Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence for a friend and former model, Dominican Sister Jacques-Marie (you can read about in her book, Henri Matisse: La Chapelle de Vence). The Vatican Museum room will include Matisse’s drawings for this chapel, along with chasubles and a cross he designed for the chapel. (Matisse also did all the windows and liturgical furnishings for the space.) You can read more about the exhibit here.
Of course, there’s the oft-fought debate over whether or not modern art is an appropriate for expressing faith. Often, its forms are abstract or seemingly more primitive than the art of the Renaissance or Medieval days of yore. However, it’s also argued that modern/contemporary art better expresses the reality of faith, because we, as Catholics, believe in some pretty mysterious and awe-inspiring stuff. I mean, the Trinity? How really do you try to paint that?
The reality is that as long as there are humans, they’ll try to make tangible the intangible, and they’ll do it with the voice of their age. The Vatican Museums are making strides in recognizing that and making it visible to their viewers.
Can you name this saint?
She has a sword, a palm and a . . . a. . . picture frame?
Who is this lady, and what is she doing in St. Adalbert’s parish in St. Paul?
Today I took a jaunt over to St. Adalbert, the historically Polish parish in St. Paul that is now home to many Vietnamese Catholics. I was invited by several longtime parishioners to try to identify some of the saints represented in the church’s century-old stained glass windows.
They knew the obvious ones — the Immaculate Conception, St. Francis, St. Clare — but there were a few they couldn’t decipher. And truly, sometimes these codes can be tough to crack. Catholic and Orthodox saints are identified with symbols called attributes. Oftentimes, these attributes are symbols from the saint’s life or martyrdom. St. Catherine of Alexandria, for example, is almost always shown with a spiked wheel, because she was tortured with one before she was beheaded. (Actually, the legend holds that angels destroyed the wheel.) St. Paul holds a sword. St. Peter holds the keys to the Kingdom. St. Therese of Lisieux holds roses. It’s fairly easy to pick up these symbols if you’re keeping your eyes open for them.
Many Catholic churches give onlookers some sort of cheat sheet, however, by providing the saint’s name at the bottom of the window or the base of the statue. Not so at St. Adalbert, however. The words that are there are in Polish, and they’re to identify the donor, not the depicted.
As we walked around the parish, I had a pretty good sense of the saints they couldn’t identify. The woman standing in front of a tower was St. Barbara, whose jealous father locked her there to keep her from the outside world and because she refused to marry. Another was St. Dominic, who can be identified not only by his Dominican garb, but also by the dog who bears a torch. According to the Golden Legend (one of the earliest written books about the lives of the saints), while she was pregnant with him, Dominic’s mother dreamed she would give birth to a dog with a burning brand that “burnt the world.”
I wasn’t immediately sure of one the window’s female saints. She was dressed as royalty with an ermine-lined cape, and she holding a church with a castle behind her. After a bit of research, I determined that it’s likely St. Hedwig, who built a monastery where she later spent the rest of her life. I found this page at Fisheaters.com helpful, as it listed many well-known saints and their common attributes.
However, one of these stained glass saints has stumped me. Her dress does not suggest she is part of a religious order, although she wears a veil (this could simply be a sign of an older woman). She wears sandals — a sign of (self-imposed?) poverty, and holds a palm branch, which suggests she is a martyr. She carries a sword, which may have been the means by which she was martyred. She also carries an object that I can’t quite make out. It looks like it could be a carpenter’s square, or it could be an actual square object that is obscured by her sleeve, like a frame. She stands with mountains behind her, which could indicate her homeland.
It’s a mystery to me. If you have any leads, I’ll take ‘em!
Update: A detail to satisfy curious readers!
Update 2 (Sept. 2):
Thank you for your comments! Without actual documentation, it’s hard to be 100 percent certain of this saint’s identity. All the suggestions — both posted and e-mailed — have been helpful. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s St. Catherine of Sienna or St. Barbara because these two saints are featured on other windows within the church and look very different.
However, St. Justina of Padua is a very good guess — several readers have e-mailed with that suggestion. My only hesitancy is that St. Justina is usually shown with the sword piercing her chest.
Another good suggestion has been St. Dymphna, who is also depicted with a sword, palm and book. I think it’s a very good chance this saint is one of them, but without confirming documentation, it’s still just a guess.
Check out these links:
What do you think?
Cathedral of St. Paul
Next year we’ll be celebrating Emmanuel Louis Masqueray’s 150th birthday — at least, we should be.
He’s responsible for some seriously notable midwest ecclesiastical architecture. The man designed the Cathedral of St. Paul; the Basilica of St. Mary; St. Louis King of France; the Thomas Aquinas Chapel at the University of St. Thomas and the university’s Ireland Hall; Keane Hall at Loras College in Dubuque, IA; Holy Redeemer in Marshall, MN; St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Sioux Falls, SD; and Immaculate Conception in Wichita, Kan., — just to name a few.
Yet, he’s, at best, a footnote in the tomes of American architects.
And I cannot figure out why.
I’m pursuing a master’s degree in Art History from the aforementioned University of St. Thomas, and my thesis focuses on Archbishop John Ireland’s patronage of the Cathedral and the Basilica. This includes the choice of Masqueray as the architect and his Ecole des Beaux Arts-influenced design.
But digging stuff up on the man is proving frustrating. Apparently, Masqueray and Ireland were in personal contact almost daily, so little written communication between the men existed. And I’ve heard rumors that there once WAS an archive of Masqueray’s papers held by the Catholic Historical Society of St. Paul, but they have mysteriously disappeared.
To make matters worse, efforts to locate Eric Hansen, the author of The Cathedral of St. Paul: An Architectural Biography, which the Cathedral published in 1990, have also failed (trust me, the Cathedral’s tried). Hansen may be the only one who can give me more insight into an intriguing fact he added to the first page in his book: That Archbishop Ireland kept scrapbooks with ideas for a Cathedral long before he actually commissioned it.
FASCINATING! Now, where the heck are they?
They’re NOT in the Cathedral archives, or the archdiocesan archives — at least not obviously. I spent an hour last week going through five boxes absolutely crammed with Ireland’s scrapbooks. He kept newspaper clippings on every topic of importance to him — the Catholic church in America, the temperance movement, the current pope, the church in the Philippines, the plight of Irish immigrants — and they’re absolutely incredible. With each box I opened and each book I wedged out, I deeply hoped I would open the pages to a clipped photo of an old French church or the Baltimore Cathedral. And with each turn of the page I grew more and more disappointed.
I know research shouldn’t be easy, but dead-ends are getting a bit old.
Somewhere out there, somebody has seen these scrapbooks, and someone else knows where Masqueray’s letters are. I’m counting on Providence to make our paths cross.
Onlookers get a good view of Raphael's tapestries and cartoons, reunited with each other and their intended space. (CNS)
As long as we’re on an Italian kick, I thought I’d throw one more in with your spaghetti and meatballs. Any of you traveling to Rome in the near future have a chance for a visual treat — Raphael’s only tapestry series and its preparatory drawings will be displayed side-by-side in the Sistine Chapel, the site for which the tapestries were made. London’s Victoria and Albert Museum will also hang companion tapestries and cartoons in the same way.
For a historian, this is totally sweet.
Most artists don’t intend their preparatory drawings, known as “cartoons,” to be art objects. Think of them as sketches, oftentimes very good ones, to guide the artist — or, more likely, his apprentices or workshop artists — toward the artist’s final vision. Raphael didn’t weave these himself; rather, he created the drawing, which the Flemish weavers followed.
However, over the years, surviving cartoons have become important in their own right. They indicate an artist’s original thought and reveal change to the plan as the actual artpiece is executed. They serve as a record for otherwise lost or destroyed works.
According to Mark Evans, senior curator of the Victoria and Albert Museum, as quoted by CNS’ Carol Glatz:
Reuniting the two halves will help people “contrast the two designs” and help them “understand how (Raphael’s designs) matured, developed and were finalized over time,” he said.
More from the story:
Because the designs would be sent off to famed tapestry artisans in Belgium, Raphael had to color them exactly like a painting so weavers would know what precise hues to use. That unique kind of detail meant the cartoons eventually became prized works of art in and of themselves.
Once in the hands of Flemish weavers at Pieter Van Aelst’s workshop in Brussels, the cartoons were cut into strips. They were copied and woven from behind so the cartoon displays the reverse image of what’s on the tapestry’s front.
Flemish weavers were highly regarded artists and had no qualms about “improving” Raphael’s designs, said Evans.
For example with the design, “Feed My Sheep,” the weavers did not like having Jesus wear a plain white robe as Raphael had indicated, so they embellished the robe with gold stars, said Evans. They also did not think Peter should be wearing blue and yellow, so they made his garment a rich red, which was considered a much more regal and sumptuous color, he said.
The tapestries cost 1,600 gold ducats a piece — an enormous amount of money because of intense labor involved and the expensive materials used like real gold and silver thread. The total cost for the 10 designs and tapestries were five times the amount Michelangelo was paid for decorating the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Read the whole thing here. It includes some fascinating history about their commissioning by Pope Leo X and their history after their completion, which includes multiple thefts and owners.
Again from the story:
Coinciding with Pope Benedict’s visit to England in September, the exhibit is meant to be a visible sign of the coming together of the two countries’ common cultural heritage, said Arnold Nesselrath, director of the Vatican Museums’ Byzantine, medieval and modern collections.
Seeing the cartoons alongside the final product is considered to be a once-in-a-lifetime event, he said; “it was something not even Raphael ever got to see.”
Worth a plane ticket over the pond? I think so.
Pope Benedict XVI blessed a the Vatican’s newest statue July 7 — a 16-foot-tall St. Annibale Di Francia carved from Carrara marble. The statue was placed in one of the Basilica of St. Peter’s outside niches, joining the host of statues of other founders of religious orders who have been filling in the gaps since 1999.
According to a Catholic News Service story by John Thavis, the architect designed these niches not to be filled. Yet, they are. Why, he asks, does the Vatican need more art, when its impressive collection already has an overwhelming number of pieces? He writes:
The Vatican is home to far more stone figures than living residents — many times more, if you count the Vatican Museums’ approximately 20,000 statues.
Why add more? That question was asked in the 1600s, when the remaining 39 empty niches inside St. Peter’s began filling up with founders of religious orders. Already the interior was crowded with more than 300 statues of popes, bishops and saints, not to mention the winged cherubs that appear all over the place.
Yet it is traditional at the Vatican to keep adding works of art and decorative architecture. That’s why visitors to the Vatican Museums can wander into rooms full of contemporary painting and sculpture, part of a vast collection of modern art works assembled under Pope Paul VI.
One fascinating fact stated by Thavis: All statues commissioned for the Vatican have to be carved by Carrara marble, which is known by the northwestern Italian city from where it comes. It’s known for a creamy white color, and it was the favorite of Michelanglo, the subject of yesterday’s blog post. The last time I was in Italy, my train stopped in Carrara, and before I saw the city’s sign, I was captivated by the white crevices of the surrounding mountains. My dad and I were debating whether it was marble or snow, because it was so white, and the Italian man sitting across from us — who had not uttered a thing to us up until this point — understood enough of our conversation to put it to rest. He pointed out the window, looked at us, and said “Pieta.”
Additionally, yesterday the Holy Father urged St. Annibale’s congregation to keep praying for vocations. According to Zenit, the Pope told the Rogationist Fathers:
“Follow his example and joyfully continue his mission, still valid today, even though the social conditions in which we live have changed. In particular, spread ever more the spirit of prayer and of solicitude for all vocations in the Church; be eager laborers for the coming of the Kingdom of God, dedicating yourselves with every energy to evangelization and human development.”
I’m guessing it’s this example of which the saint’s new statue is intended to be a reminder.
