Pilgrimage to the museum : man's search for God through art and time
Stephen F. Auth
Bok · Engelsk · 2022
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| Omfang | vii, 230 sider : illustrasjoner
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| Opplysninger | "Naples, Italy, April, 2021. It has been a fruitful Lent and Easter for me, for sure. Distracted, like everyone else, by the disruptions of the Coronavirus lockdowns, and the resulting volatility in the markets, I had lost the better part of a year from my plans to commit to words the story of our pilgrimage to the Museum. But as things calmed down in late February, my Lenten project became Pilgrimage to the Museum. And like most other spiritual projects, I've gotten more from it than I gave. I've spent years studying and meditating on these masterpieces at the Met. But the very process of writing the stories down brought fresh insights-some simple and obvious, others more profound-and set me off in new, unexpected directions. Let me leave you with one of those thoughts. Though the history of art can be viewed, for sure, as a missionary's search for God, or even as "Man's Search for God," in a deeper way, isn't it more realistic to call it "God's Search for Man"? After all, who put it into Perneb's head even to dream of finding his route to eternity-even if he, as all of us often do, took a wrong turn in getting there? And who gave Polykleitos that image of the perfect God-man that became the Diadoumenos? Wasn't God there, knocking on the door of Trebonianus Gallus, waiting to break through, to ease the pain of his wrinkled brow, even as he did for Constantine just a century later? Who inspired St. Vincent to take up his own cross in the third century, eventually to be remembered forever in the heavenly stained glass of the San Michelle Abbey Church? Wasn't God there, speaking to Duccio through the gentle hand of the Christ Child as He comforted Mary? And wasn't He there, in that wind, as His angel disrupted the young Mary in prayer in Messina's Virgin Annunciate? Surely He was present in the eyes of El Greco as he painted St. John looking up to the clouds in The Opening of the Fifth Seal and in the fire that still called to St. Peter, and Caravaggio, through the pain of his denial: "Peter, I still love you. Come home." He had to be with Rembrandt as he struggled with virtue and vice in Aristotle with the bust of Homer, and He was surely there welcoming him home as the prodigal son in the great artist's final painting. He was there with Mary Magdalen in the second candle and with the forlorn Watteau in the Mezzetin, calling to them across time and space, "Don't give up. There is still time to let me love you. Just give me a chance." Wasn't He there as Sanmartino carved his image in the veiled Christ? How else could a mere human have captured so entirely His confidence, and love, in death itself? Could He have been there as The Thinker, looking down on Rodin's Gates of Hell, opened by our Original Sin? And surely He was there in Monet's beautiful attempt to paint his tomb, in the shimmering sun and the azure sky. Picasso couldn't see Him, but we could, reaching out to the poor blind man, ready to heal him if he would just ask Him to. He seemed gone entirely in that lonely woman near the Wil- liamsburg Bridge, looking out, sad and alone, but still, we could sense His presence in those white clouds above her. And Dalí may have lost Him, at one point, as we all do, but he found Him again, on the Hypercube. He was there all along. He's there now. Waiting for us. We just need to open the door. To lift the veil"--
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| Dewey | |
| ISBN | 9781644137161
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