The Sacred Made Real

I had to go down to London this week, and took the opportunity to call in at the National Gallery’s exhibition of Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600-1700 called  The Sacred Made Real. It focusses on the painted sculpture of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, which combined very skilful carving with highly realistic painted surfaces to create a very direct and emotive effect. The sculptures were made for practical use in the encouragement of faith, and have remained in use ever since – with both aspects of that (their overt and emotional faith commitment and their still being in use) meaning that they have received little attention from the art world hitherto.

it is not a large exhibition, but it is an impressive one, with a good selection of high quality exhibits well hung and lit.

My reaction? I was moved; and thought that here we have a powerful reminder that both Christ and Mary on the one hand and the saints of the faith on the other were human as we are; and looking at them invited me into the real relationship between them. I would imagine that that was precisely the hope of those who made and commissioned the artworks.

So one painting I had not seen before was by Francisco Ribalta (1565–1628) and is entitled
Christ embracing Saint Bernard
of Clairvaux. Well yes, but it is both Bernard embracing both a painted statue of Christ, and also  in the Spirit knowing the real Christ embracing him: and it is that two-way-ness that is I think at the heart of this powerful art. We embrace it: and through it we are embraced.

   

Here is a link to a Video by Archbishop Vincent Nicholls talking with art critics about three of the works.

Filed under: Art, Christianity

A Touching Time at Thriplow

This week also saw me at Thriplow to institute a fellow Sheffielder, the Revd Canon Linda Church, as Rector for the benefice of Fowlmere, Foxton, Thriplow and Shepreth. She comes to us from the Hucknall Team Ministry, and one the folk ‘giving her away’ from there got us off to a cheerful start by announcing that he used to be 18 inches taller until he had to start keep up with Linda in her work. The service brought a good blend of seriousness and informality, and we enjoyed getting to know the more prayerful side of Linda as well, as you can find out about in my sermon, based on the unusual reading she chose: John’s account of Mary Magdalene anointing the feet of Jesus and washing them with her hair.

Filed under: Art, Church of England, Sermons and Talks

Burlington House Balls

‘Tall Tree and the Eye’, 2009, part of the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, has replaced Bryan Kneale’s ‘Triton III’ which was displayed as part of the Summer Exhibition, in the Annenberg Courtyard of the Royal Academy. Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academy of Arts will be on view from the 26th September to the 11th December 2009.

Filed under: Art

Oooh la Lille

  

We popped into Lille today for a bit of atmosphere and a spot of lunch. Almost Belgian in feel (the county of Flanders straddled the modern boundary), and now the seat of an archbishop, who we entertained to dinner last night. The cathedral was built as a shrine to the Virgin, becoming first a basilica and then recently in 2008 a metropolitan cathedral. I particularly admired the stations of the cross by Jean-Luc Bonduau – more perhaps of these later.

Filed under: Art, Christianity, Travel

Summer Snaps (10): Oban

We passed through Oban on our way to Mull, and enjoyed its busy harbour, and surprisingly interesting shopping. There are quite a few art galleries there, of which our favourite was Kranenburg Fine Art, not cheap but with a well-chosen selection from a good showing of one of our favourites among what I call the new Scottish Colourists, Jolomo, to Scott Irvine’s striking fused glass bowls and sushi plates. You’ll see one on our mantelpiece at Villa Huntingdon.

Filed under: Art, Travel, photography , Scotland

New Cross at Barton School

Barton Primary School has a striking new cross on the wall of its hall. made in ash by former pupil Quin Hollick

The top part uses a sunburst-on-cross motif that Quin has devised and which also appears on a reredos of his, and then at the bottom of the cross are three inscribed symbols: barley (for the School), crossed keys (for St Peter’s Barton), and lilies on a saltire (for St Andrew and St Mary’s Grantchester – the school also serves that parish).

It was my privilege to dedicate the cross in an assembly today – and in fact all the children joined me in some of the words and actions too. The school has a San Salvadorean cross on each of its classroom walls, and I talked with some of the children about how just as on those crosses there are scenes of their local life, so on their own cross were symbols of their own life, indicating our placing of our life in Christ’s, and our desire to live withhis life in ours. 

A splendidly-named article in the Independent Garden ornaments: Art for the avant-gardener tells us that Quin

was trained by a pupil of Eric Gill at Bryanston. He works to commission, making striking sundials incorporating details about the buyer. His portable Split Equatorial sundials, made of slate, can be tilted to the latitude of any country around the world. Also works in marble. Prices between £500 and £5,000.

He can be contacted at Brock’s Close, Swayne’s Lane, Comberton, Cambridgeshire CB3 7EF.

Filed under: Art, Schools

Trinity Sunday

It’s hard to avoid Rublev’s famous icon of the Hospitality of Abraham on Trinity Sunday.

We’ve just had our first ‘big’ party since I took up office as Bishop. Entertaining is something Jean and I really want to do, but for large scale entertaining we at least need to feel ‘at home’ ourselves first, and properly geared up to it.

Then, it’s fine. And I have to say that the evening felt very right and seemed very well appreciated. And after all, hospitality towards both friends and strangers is a deeply rooted value in our faith.

Abraham entertains three strangers who turn out to be messengers from God and perhaps in some sense God himself. This must have been in the mind of the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews when he wrote, “Keep on loving each other as brothers. ^ Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.” (Hebs 13.1-2) And of course Jesus teaches us plainly in the parable of the sheep and the goats that when welcome a stranger we welcome Him. (Mt 25.35).

So here is something which is at the heart of our faith. God welcomes us back to him when we have become strangers to Him, prodigal sons and daughters, and he asks us in return to welcome others – into our own lives, and into His Life. Furthermore, if we do not welcome others ourselves, we put at risk our own welcome by God. This is a lesson we need to learn, even if it is sometimes a hard one, especially for the more introverted or hurt among us.

There is a deeper mystery here too. Deep within the heart of God there is a sort of eternal welcome going on. One of the important truths of the doctrine of the Trinity is that although God is One, He is not One that is cold or closed-in on Himself. He is Love, love in action not a disembodied ideal, and within His own being are, as St Augustine put it, the lover, the beloved and the love that flows between them – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

It is this truth that the great icon painter – or icon writer as they properly say – Andrei Rublev tried to make present to us in his work that we call The Hospitality of Abraham or The Old Testament Trinity. The very act of making an icon was, according to St Gregory Palamas, a response of love to God for His love to us. It aimed, according to St John Damascene, to be God present to us in the image of the picture just as the Bible is God present to us in the Word, through the agency of the Holy Spirit. So reading the icon becomes an act of prayer that unites us with the Father, in Christ his image, through the Spirit: we are brought into the very life of the Trinity.

The way the icon is painted brings this truth to life. Rublev has left out the figures of Abraham and Sarah to concentrate on the presence of God. On the left is the angel representing the Father – with Abraham’s house behind Him representing the Father’s house of many rooms into which we are invited. Like all the figures he holds a rod of authority and is clothed in blue, the colour of the heavens and divinity, here overlain with the shimmering purplish-gold of majesty and transcendence. With his right hand he blesses the Son, represented by the angel in the middle, in whom He is well pleased.

The Son wears his blue like a deacon’s stole, over the crimson tunic of His incarnation and passion – His unvarying garments in the eastern tradition. Behind him the tree of the oasis’s life stands for the Cross, the Tree of Life itself. He bows towards the Father in obedience – ‘Thy will be done’ – and blesses the cup of sacrifice which is in front of Him. The cup contains literally the meat prepared by Abraham for his guests, but spiritually the sacrifice of the Passover and of Christ himself, and the Communion in which we share.

To the right is the angel representing the Holy Spirit, on Whom the gaze of the Father rests, as He sends Him to be our Comforter. The Spirit is clothed in the green of the resurrection life which He leads us into, and behind Him is the mountain of prayer which is also the rock from which living water pours out for us.

The Spirit points downwards, to a rectangular opening in the front of the altar, for that is how we must read the table. The opening is four cornered, as the earth was said to be, and in an altar would have held the relics of martyrs, of those who shared in Christ’s suffering as His witnesses, and share now in His risen life. Christ’s hand also blesses here as it blesses the cup above, and we are shown that His sacrifice is indeed for the salvation of the world, and – most importantly – that we share in that salvation by entering into the sacrifice.

Finally, standing back from the icon, we can see that its very composition is making the same point as its parts. The three angels and the opening, which is us, form a circle – our invitation to be joined into the eternal love of the Godhead. The heads going across and the opening, the cup, the head of Christ and the tree going upwards then make the sign of the Cross, by which we have our entry into that circle of sacrifice. And finally see how the bodies of the two outer angels frame the shape of another cup between them: the cup of communion that is the sacrament of God’s presence with us and ours with Him.

So the whole icon is a deliberate invitation to us to enter the circle of loving sacrifice, to be joined with God, and to find our joy and our salvation there. In modern times the writer Henri Nouwen looked long at it, and at a time of great stress and exhaustion found in it a renewing peace that reminded him of a verse from Psalm 84: “The sparrow has found its home at last … Happy are those who live in your house.”

So, back to the week that each of us has just left behind us, and to the week that lies ahead of us. It is into those weeks that God has called us. It is there that we must spend our daily lives, and face in them the challenges of both friend and stranger, of both trying to do good and confronting evil.

God’s word to us is that we are not called to this only, though, and not to do it in our own strength. We are also called to spend time in the circle of His love. We are already citizens of heaven, daughters and sons of His family, welcome in His home. In prayer, with the help of an icon like Rublev’s or without it, we can share in the hospitality and refreshment of heaven even while we offer it to others here on earth. And when the cost is more than we can bear, we can find a place in the heart of God’s love, a place like the place of the martyrs, and know that we are safe.

Post Communion Prayer for Trinity Sunday
Almighty and eternal God,
you have revealed yourself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
and live and reign in the perfect unity of love:
hold us firm in this faith,
that we may know you in all your ways
and evermore rejoice in your eternal glory,
who are three Persons yet one God,
now and for ever. 

Filed under: Art, Christianity , hospitality, icon, Rublev

The View from the Cross

This is Tissot’s What Our Lord Saw from the Cross, in the Brooklyn Museum, which popped up on my Google homepage. (I use a widget called Art of the Day that brings up a daily image from http://www.artbible.info/). It’s a gouache, about 9” square, painted around 1890 as part of a series of some 350 images of the New Testament. Tissot turned to making these in the 1880’s after a religious vision: before then he painted fashionable French society.

It’s the unusual viewpoint that is striking here. Whether or not Tissot’s version of realism works for you, it’s hard once you’ve seen it to forget the question, “What was it like for Jesus to look down from the Cross?”

Filed under: Art, Christianity , Tissot

Cuthbert at Carlisle

Carlisle Cathedral is set to host what promises to be an excellent festival later this week (Thursday 30 April to Sunday 3rd May) to celebrate St Cuthbert and his connections with Carlisle and the surrounding region.

The events will include:

• a keynote address delivered in the cathedral by Prof. Richard Sharpe on the evening of Thursday 30^th April at 7.30pm. (This event will be sponsored by the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society)

• an all-day coach trip to see the Bewcastle and Ruthwell crosses on Friday 1^st April, led by the Bishop of Huntingdon (!) – who in another life is a recent writer about the Bewcastle Cross.
• an all-day academic seminar chaired by Dr Jonathan Wooding on Saturday 2^nd May in the Fratry building at the Cathedral. Speakers will include Dr Hugh Doherty, Dr Fiona Edmonds, Dr Mary Low, Dr Mike McCarthy, Dr Alan Thacker, and Dr Jonathan Wooding.
• The Dean of Durham will be the preacher at the 10.30 Cathedral Eucharist on Sunday 3rd May

Tickets can be ordered from the Cathedral Office (01228 548151). Further details, including a festival programme, can be obtained on the Carlisle Diocesan website.

Filed under: Art, Christianity, Travel , Carlisle, Cuthbert

St Edmundsbury

Yesterday was a super day out in the sun for us here in East Anglia. We nurtured by interest in things Anglo-Saxon with a trip to the reconstructed village at West Stow, where we were struck by the executive class Piggery (see left) as well as  the generally fascinating results of experimental archaeology. From there on to Bury St Edmunds and especially St Edmundsbury Cathedral – a recent foundation as a cathedral of course (said he from the smug safety of Ely’s 900th anniversary this year) but in truth an ancient place and full of both historical interest and notable modern developments. On the ancient side I was struck most by the reproduction of the mediaeval Bury Cross (right – showing Moses in the Wilderness).  

On the modern side, top of the list was the sculpture ‘Godspeed V’ by Jonathan Clarke, made of cast aluminium, and offering a vision of hope in our pilgrimage. ‘Godspeed’ was also co-incidentally the name of the ship in which Bartholomew Gosnold of Bury sailed for New England in 1606, naming Martha’s Vineyard after his daughter who was both baptised and buried at the Abbey, as it then was. I’m making a prayer/greetings card based on it that I hope to use in our own Diocese.

Striking too was a window showing Miriam a-dancing, in a riot of colour which evoked the sound of the timbrel for me as if it had been playing right there. St Cecilia was next to her, in rather more solemn style. I rather wish more cathedral choirs could temper their music with timbrels, but then I am an acknowledged waver-of-hands in worship, so that’s not really a surprise.

Best surprise of the visit, though, was the notice on the basement door in the rather fine re-made set of cloister rooms. So that’s how we should be including Young People in our churches. I always wondered how some places seemed to manage it without any noticeable effect on their upstairs decorum … When my Youth Worker daughter reads this there could be fireworks – but in truth I’m just jealous (a) that they’ve got a proper set up for Youth, and (b) I appear to be locked out.

Filed under: Art, Church of England, Travel , youth