Good Friday: The Rest is Silence
It's been a rough week - have some art
I have many things in draft that I have not finished to post this week, but should be up next week.
Please have patience - my son is home this week from school, and it is very disruptive. I will have more to say about that later.
But for now… some relevant pictures from my trip to the Wadsworth Atheneum yesterday.
Restoring an Altarpiece
Conservation IRL (In Real Life): The Mass of Saint Gregory Panels
July 26, 2024–May 11, 2025
Acquired by the museum in 1935, these two panel paintings were originally the outer doors of a large altarpiece. The donors of the altar and the church that it was commissioned for are known, however the subject of the main altar and the artist are yet unidentified. This single image carrying over both panels depicts the miraculous appearance of Jesus to Saint Gregory as he prayed during mass for a sign to convince doubters that the bread and wine were the body and blood of Christ. Flanked by Bishops and Cardinals, the scene is set before representations of the Passion in the background. At the top, two coats of arms that represent Laurent de Gorrervod and his wife Claude de Rioire, who commissioned the altar sometime in the early 16th century, can be seen.
This display will follow in real time the research, study, and conservation treatment of these two paintings. Follow the treatment as it progresses, and at times observe the process being carried out as conservators work to remove a heavily discolored varnish and areas of old retouching. See how technical imaging, materials analysis, and microscopic examination provide vital information about the painting’s condition, how they were made, and possible insights into the artist who painted them.
A few comments on Pope St. Gregory the Great, as we Catholics often refer to him, to distinguish him from the other St. Gregorys.
First, I selected Pope St. Gregory the Great as Diarmuid’s Confirmation saint. Diarmuid has gone through all the Catholic initiation sacraments, including Confirmation, but they’ve had to be adapted given his cognitive disabilities. A lot of people choose a saint like St. Joseph of Cupertino for children with cognitive disabilities, but I decided to go another route.
Gregory is associated with many things in the Church, including an apocryphal story about how he sent St. Augustine of Canterbury (not to be confused with Augustine of Hippo) to evangelize the Anglo-Saxon(-Jutes) when he saw one of that group in the slave market in Rome. He did indeed sent missions to the British Isles, which had re-paganized after the fall of the Western Empire, but let’s not get distracted here.
It was his association with music — he did not invent Gregorian Chant, though his name was slapped on it. I got to participate in a few of the Gregorian modes this morning as my parish had a Tenebrae service.
That said, he is considered the patron saint of musicians, and is associated with liturgical reform and the use of music in the liturgy.
The Mass of St. Gregory, like Gregorian chant, was also something that a later person made up and slapped Gregory the Great’s name on it:
The pious legend of the event was chronicled by Paul the Deacon, an eighth-century Benedictine monk from the Abbey of Monte Cassino near Rome. In his biography of Pope Gregory, later retold in the thirteenth-century Golden Legend, Paul relates the story of a “doubting matron” who comes to church bringing bread that she had baked herself to be used for Mass. When she came up to receive Communion, Gregory noticed her smiling incredulously, and upon inquiry, the woman told him that she could not believe that bread she had baked herself could become the Body and Blood of Christ simply through the words of consecration. Hearing this, he prayed urgently that her unbelief might be healed, and suddenly a host changed to the appearance of actual flesh and blood approximating a human finger. Seeing this, the woman’s faith in the Real Presence was restored, and she knelt down, weeping in repentance.
It became a popular theme in Catholic artwork, but they usually remove the doubting matron entirely… which makes sense, because she wouldn’t be that close to the altar. The focus is generally on St. Gregory and the crucified Christ, and there would be clerics accompanying St. Gregory in the celebration of the Mass.
There was some explanation of what was being done, with some accompanying video.
European Drawings from the Wadsworth Collection
Paper, Color, Line
January 16–April 27, 2025
Location: Wadsworth level 3R
The Wadsworth Atheneum’s rich collection of European drawings, watercolors, and pastels is little-known and rarely seen. Since the mid-nineteenth century, the museum has acquired by purchase and gift a diverse group of nearly 1,250 European drawings of impressive quality. Paper, Color, Line showcases about sixty to seventy highlights on view for the first time in decades. This long overdue exhibition provides a unique survey of artists engaging with the medium over a span of more than five hundred years.
The museum’s holdings are particularly strong in works from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Renowned drawings by Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec will be included in this exhibition, as well as highlights by Egon Schiele, Paul Klee, and Joan Miró. The collection is additionally noted for its theatrical designs, particularly its material linked with the Ballets Russes, which encompasses sheets by Pablo Picasso, Léon Bakst, and Natalia Gontcharova. Significant drawings from the Renaissance to the Rococo by artists such as Giorgio Vasari, Carlo Maratti, and Jean-Baptiste Greuze emphasize the timeless appeal of the medium and will complement the overview.
Organized along thematic lines, Paper, Color, Line offers a rich overview of 500 years of draftsmanship in Europe. The variety of schools, techniques, and uses will make for a lively display. While the exhibition explores broader topics such as artistic education, technical innovation, and the art market, it is centered on arresting works that convey the universal appeal of drawings as one of the most revealing expressions of the creative process.
Here are two of the pieces in the exhibit appropriate for today.
A link to the mobile tour item on The Deposition of Christ: https://mobile.wa.yourcultureconnect.com/e/paper-color-line/descent-from-the-cross-c-1537
Many of the drawings in the exhibit were studies not intended as finished pieces - sometimes “just practice”, sometimes plans for larger pieces or pieces in other media (paintings, stained glass windows), or an earlier sketch that was going to be the underdrawing for a painting, but then abandoned.
Some of the pieces in the exhibit were finished items.
Yeah, it’s tough to take pictures of some of the items.
So I just kept my reflection in that one.
See y’all later.