Art: The Holy Family with Mary Magdalen by El Greco. Framed: 160 x 131 x 7.5 cm. (Spanish, 1541–1614). The Cleveland Museum of Art. https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1926.247 The work of Doménikos Theotokópoulos (1541–1614) stands out among the painters of the late Renaissance and Mannerist period. A native of the Greek island of Crete, he became established as an iconographer before moving to Venice to study the oil painting techniques of the late Renaissance. Adopting the name “El Greco” (the Greek) while in Italy, he mastered the naturalism and color quality of the Venetians before moving to Rome in 1570. He settled in... Read more
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Articles Under: Catechizing with Art
Art: Coronation of the Virgin with the Trinity and Saints Miniature from a Psalter (series) c. 1440, Olivetan Master. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC “Hope finds its supreme witness in the Mother of God . In the Blessed Virgin, we see that hope is not naive optimism but a gift of grace amid the realities of life.” — Pope Francis [1] As the Church venerates Mary, Mother of God on the first day of this jubilee year of 2025, our gaze turns to the mother of Jesus, the mother of the Church, our spiritual mother who accompanies each of... Read more
To view a full resolution of this artwork on a smartboard, click here . In the traditional hierarchy of painting, still life has often been viewed as the lowest genre to pursue. While history and religious painting served a moral or spiritual purpose, frequently involving an engaging narrative or drama, still life painting served to depict believable props rather than focusing on the objects themselves. This changed in the Dutch Golden Age as commercial prosperity in the port cities increased the wealth of the 17th-century middle class. With interest in beautifying their homes, the modest still life increased in popularity,... Read more
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To view a full resolution of this artwork on a smartboard, click here . Any first impression of The Procession to Calvary by Pieter Bruegel the Elder is telling. I can still remember my initial encounter with it. The scene came across as a chaotic, dizzying whirlwind of activity. Beyond the larger mourning figures in the foreground, I felt a deeper disturbance in the picture, the source of which remained unknown. It seemed to reverberate through the crowd that thronged the landscape, like ripples pushing through the water after a stone has been thrown in. The sheer number of figures... Read more
This is a paid advertisement. To order these books, visit https://ignatius.com/ or call 800-651-1531.Read more
Many moons ago, when I was a young social work student in North Dakota, I was required to take a course called “Indian Studies.” One of the books for the course was titled Black Elk Speaks . It was the moving account of the experience of the life of indigenous peoples prior to the arrival of the white European settlers, as seen through the eyes of a Lakota elder named Nicholas Black Elk. John Neihardt, the man who penned the book in the early 1930s, had a sense of the urgent need to preserve a record of what native life... Read more
To view a full resolution of this artwork on a smartboard, click here . The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a beautiful dogma of the Church that conveys to the faithful the importance of the Blessed Mother. In 1950, the apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus (The Most Bountiful God) was promulgated by Pope Pius XII. It declared that Mary was assumed into heaven—body and soul—at the end of her earthly life. Many traditions gathered from ancient sources tell us of Mary’s life after the scriptural conclusion of the apostolic age. The whole Church, in both in history and in... Read more
“The option or love of preference for the poor . . . is an option, or a special form of primacy in the exercise of Christian charity, to which the whole tradition of the Church bears witness. It affects the life of each Christian inasmuch as he or she seeks to imitate the life of Christ, but it applies equally to our social responsibilities and hence to our manner of living, and to the logical decisions to be made concerning the ownership and use of goods ” — St. John Paul II [1] Saints Love the Poor The saints of... Read more
To view a digital version of the artwork click here . The Ghent Altarpiece, also known by the title The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb , is one of the most famous images in art history. The additional title is important as a signal to the viewer to pay close attention to where the image leads us through an evocation of the narrative of salvation. Jan van Eyck was born in the fourteenth century in present-day Belgium and settled in the city of Bruges, where he accomplished his major works during the Northern Renaissance. He and his artist brother Hubert... Read more
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