Comments

1. Susan Gannon 04/04/2009 - 1:45 pm  subscriber

   Thanks and a happy Easter Fr. K. I din’t know about this exhibit, and won’t be able to get to Washington, but for anyone in the same boat, here’s a peek at some more of those treasures courtesy of the National gallery website.

   http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2009/heaven/slideshow/index.shtm

2. Louis Masi 04/04/2009 - 1:53 pm

   For those of you north of Washington, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC has a wonderful exhibit of illuminated manuscripts entitled “Choirs of Angels: Painting in Italian Choir Books, 1300–1500″ which will be closing Easter Sunday.

3. Nicholas Clifford 04/04/2009 - 2:21 pm  subscriber

   Those of us too far north of both NY and Washington to get to either place can only be envious (a good, Christian envy, of course). And while Italian choir book painting is splendid, it never quite makes it to the level (in my estimation) of the earlier German work of the 11th and 12th centuries (with their significant dose of influence from Irish monks on the continent, in places like St. Gallen, etc.)

4. Joseph A. Komonchak 04/04/2009 - 2:26 pm  contributor

   Nicholas:

   I tend to agree, and let us not forget the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells! Dark Ages indeed!

5. Jimmy Mac 04/04/2009 - 4:33 pm  subscriber

   And this work in progress …..

   http://www.catholicvoiceoakland.org/09-03-30/inthisissue1.htm

   A work for eternity: 21st-century scribes produce illustrated Bible

   One copy of the Wisdom volume was presented to the Oakland Cathedral of Christ the Light on March 7, by Oakland residents Dan and Katharine Whalen. The Whalens have also donated the cathedral organ.

   Dan Whalen is interim president of Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., where in 1998 the Benedictine monks commissioned Donald Jackson, senior scribe to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Crown Office to lead the project.

6. E. Paul Kelly 04/05/2009 - 2:04 am  subscriber

   Thank you, Father. In the torrent of criticism of Roman Catholicism, justified and un-, we lose sight of our traditions, long-lasting over two millennia, and embellished with the skill and creativity of the finest artists in that history. We should pause, in our anger, over the top to our critics yet righteous to us, behold, not just look at, an “Ïllumination”and think not only of the man who created that, but of the folk in the painting, and, perhaps, of God and a Creator’s desire to be our friend.

7. Gabriel Austin 04/05/2009 - 3:55 pm

   Abraham? or God the Father?

8. Rita E. Ferrone 04/05/2009 - 6:08 pm  subscriber

   I too was surprised to see Abraham suggested. The pose and the appearance of the ancillary figures seem more to suggest God the Father. Any art historians out there with definitive information (I don’t consider captions in newspapers to be definitive!)?

9. David Gibson 04/05/2009 - 9:25 pm  subscriber  contributor

   Thanks for this post and the one below. Real gems.

   BTW, apropos of the reviewer’s opening lines about pages torn from manucscripts…I met the late Leonard Boyle, OP, librarian of the Vatican for many years, a couple of times, enough to know he was a man with a mischievous sense of humor, but always to make a point. He used to scandalize colleagues at the library and in the profession by proposing that they tear pages out of some of the great manuscripts in the Library’s colection and send them around on exhibit. “Nobody will ever read them or see them if they stay stuck in here!” he’d say. Again, he was half-joking, at most, and maybe he had a point.

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