DECEMBER 18-31, 2015 3a

NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER

THEOLOGY

Divine Beauty exhibit traces

religious arts rebirth
By MENACHEM WECKER

LORENCE, ITALY . When Edvard

Munch cracked open his
fathers bedroom door,
he was cooling off after
storming out of the
house in the aftermath
of a fight. The Norwegian artist, famous for The Scream
(1893-1910), was raised Lutheran but didnt share the
devout faith of his father,
whom he called obsessively
religious to the point of psychosis.
It was natural that tempers would flare during a
theological argument. The
painter argued that no matter
the severity of ones sins, one
could only suffer in hell for
a maximum of 1,000 years;
Dr. Christian Munch was
adamant, however, that the
wicked suffered a thousand
times a thousand years in
damnation.

Glyn Warren Philpot, Angel

of the Annunciation (1925)

Observing his father undetected, Edvard Munch

saw something he had never before observed: his father
kneeling in prayer. Munch
closed the door, retired to his
room and, unable to sleep,
started to draw what would
become the basis of his woodcut Old Man Praying (1902).
The soft light on the nightstand cast a yellow glow over
his night shirt. I filled in the
colors. As soon as it was finished, I went to bed and slept
soundly, Munch wrote, as
quoted in a publication of
Oberlin Colleges Allen Memorial Art Museum.
An impression of the woodcut another sold at Christies in 2013 for $120,000 appears in the final room of
the Palazzo Strozzis exhibit Divine Beauty from Van
Gogh to Chagall and Fontana
(through Jan. 24) in Florence.
In some ways, Munchs portrayal of his father epitomizes many of the issues that surface in the show: the coexistence in religious art of the
sublime and the deeply traumatic, the struggle between
faith and skepticism, and shift-

ing perceptions of those tensions and of the appropriate

ways to delineate them in art.
Florence Cardinal Giuseppe
Betori decided that it was important to stage a show like
Divine Beauty at a secular
museum, according to Ludovica Sebregondi, one of the exhibition curators.
He wanted to ensure that
the debate on religious art
was not restricted to a single type of audience, but that
the exhibition would prompt
a discussion on the ways in
which artists have addressed
the theme, Sebregondi said.
The curators chose to limit the shows scope to the mid19th to mid-20th centuries for
two reasons, according to Sebregondi. First, another coterminous show in Florence,
He Became Flesh: Contemporary Art and the Sacred
hangs a five-minute walk
away at the Basilica of San
Lorenzo (through Jan. 9), and
that show addresses more recent works.
And, more importantly, the
Palazzo Strozzis exhibition
timespan signifies a century of the rebirth of religious
art, in which the ethical values that were demanded of
the art world helped to restore
religious themes to their place
as one of the categories considered aesthetically pleasing, Sebregondi said.
The exhibit, which is organized thematically, features quite a few works by
well-known artists: Munchs
Madonna and Madonna
II (both 1895-1902); Georges
Rouaults Ecce Homo (1952)
and Veil of Veronica (1946);
Max Ernsts Crucifix (1914);
Van Goghs Piet (After Delacroix) (circa 1890); Henri
Matisses Green Chasuble
(1951); Jean-Franois Millets
Angelus (1857-59); Marc Chagalls White Crucifixion
(1938); and Picassos Christ
on the Cross (1896-97). The
last two are worth reflecting
upon further.
Chagalls painting, from the
collection of the Art Institute
of Chicago, is Pope Francis
favorite (NCR, May 9-22, 2014).
During its stay in Italy, the
work traveled to the Florence
Baptistery, where the pope
viewed it on Nov. 10.
Pope Francis appeared
pleased and engaged as he
viewed the Chagall painting,
according to an Art Institute
of Chicago release, which added that the pope told Douglas
Druick, the Art Institutes director, Caravaggio and Chagall are my favorite artists.
The release stated that it
was the first time the pope
had seen the Chagall painting,
which Druick called a matchless moment in the life of this
painting.

The Picasso oil-and-charcoal work on paper, created when the artist was in his
teenage years, drew considerable controversy for its underdeveloped head.
Some have likened Christs
head to a dog or a wolf, notes
the Palazzo Strozzi wall label,
but blasphemous intent is
unlikely in a 15-year-old.
Asked why Picasso, who
had already gotten himself
into quite a bit of trouble as
a teenager, couldnt have intended the work to be blasphemous, Sebregondi admits that
the artist was a very precocious youngster. However,
she said, at the age of 15, one
is undoubtedly still too young
to be able to countenance the
full problematique that lies
behind an image such that of
the crucified Christ with an
animals head.
The young artist likely was
unaware at the time of Roman
crucifixions with dogs heads
in catacombs, or depictions
of saints with dogs heads, according to Sebregondi.
She added that Picasso, despite his openly avowed atheism, is not blasphemous in
his 1930 Crucifixion, which
is in the collection of Paris
Picasso Museum.
Picassos Christ on the
Cross comes about halfway
through the exhibit in a section titled Crucifixion, Deposition, Resurrection.
It is preceded by sections on
From Salon to Altar, Rosa
Mystica, Life of Christ: The
Annunciation to the Virgin
Mary, Nativity and Childhood of Christ, Miracles
and Parables, The Passion
and Last Supper, Via Crucis.
The rest of the exhibit is arranged in sections on Deposition, Piet, Resurrection,
Severini: Mural Decoration
from Spirituality to Poetry,
Architecture, The Church
and Prayer.
The sections, Sebregondi
said, are meant to move from
the crucial turning point in
the 1860s when Pope Pius
IX opened the Vaticans first
religious art museum amid a
time otherwise typified by artists displaying a certain hesitancy toward religious art
through calmer and more
contemplative sections, such
as those devoted to the Virgin
Mary.
The exhibit was designed
to evoke the architecture of a
cloister, with open arches that
allude to the spaces of modern art, she said.
Some works, such as
Munchs Madonna II were
included for their ability to
trigger a debate, according
to Sebregondi.
Another such work is William-Adolphe Bouguereaus
Flagellation of Jesus Christ

WilliamAdolphe
Bouguereau,
Flagellation of Jesus
Christ (1880)

Art courtesy of Palazzo Strozzi

(1880), which, per a wall label,

caused a stir when the artist allowed aesthetic considerations to prevail over the dramatic austerity traditionally
associated with the subject.
In 1880, the artist was criticized for imbuing the flagellation with the mood of a typical Salon picture, thus causing aestheticism to prevail
over a sense of drama.
To modern eyes, the painting, like most of Bouguereaus
works, is likely to conjure a
good deal of sentimentality,
and thats true of many of the
more illustrative works in the
exhibit.
Exceptions include Glyn
Warren Philpots Angel of
the Annunciation (1925),
which casts the viewer as
Mary, as the angel kneels,
with cloak aflutter, and offers
a lily. The viewer gets to decide not only whether to be
open to the angels appearance, but also to the frame as a
religious painting.
Jean-Franois Millets Angelus, on loan to the exhibit from Paris Muse dOrsay,
has generated a different sort
of notoriety. The work depicts
a man and a woman, with
heads bowed in prayer, standing in a field breaking from
digging potatoes.
They recite the prayer devoted to the Virgin surrounded by a pitchfork, a basket
and a wheelbarrow. In the distance, the field dissolves into
a yellow, purple, pink and
green sunset, and what appears to be a church steeple
peeks out from over the horizon. As the title betrays, the
bells are indeed ringing, calling people to prayer.
In 1865, Millet said, The
idea for The Angelus came
to me because I remembered
that my grandmother, hearing
the church bell ringing while
we were working in the fields,
always made us stop work to
say the Angelus prayer for the
poor departed.
The work, notes the exhibit wall label, has become a

global icon for spirituality associated with the sentiment

of nature and of mans toil,
conveyed in the simple yet solemn gestures of the two figures who stand out against a
sweeping landscape.
The Muse dOrsay website
is quick to caution that the
work is a childhood memory and not the desire to glorify some religious feeling; besides Millet was not a churchgoer. (No word on why someone who didnt go to church
couldnt also want to glorify a
sense of the sacred.)
When the Louvre tried to
purchase the work in 1889,
it triggered an unbelievable
rush of patriotic fervor, the
site notes, and in 1932, it was
lacerated by a madman.
Had she had unfettered access to show whatever she
wanted in the exhibit, Sebregondi would have paired
the Millet with Salvador Dals
Atavism at Twilight (1933)
at the Museum of Fine Arts
in Bern, Switzerland. Millets work clearly influenced
Dal, who had seen a copy of
it in the school he attended as
a child. Dal turned the man
into a skeleton; moved the
wheelbarrow upon the skeletons head, and set the scene
in the wilderness, rather than
a field.
Seeing Millets work
aroused an obscure sense of
anguish in Dal as a child,
a sense of anguish so strong
that the memory of the two
silhouettes was to stay with
him for many years, according to Sebregondi.
Displaying his picture
alongside the painting that inspired it would have allowed
us to muse on how an idyllic
19th-century work of religious
art turned into a very disturbing picture in the 20th century, she said.
[Menachem Wecker is co-author of
Consider No Evil: Two Faith Traditions and the Problem of Academic
Freedom in Religious Higher Education.]