La Salle University
During the Advent season, which began on Sunday, December 3, Brothers Robert Kinzler and Leonard Marsh will provide three brief reflections on pieces of art from the La Salle University Art Museum. These will consist of a guide “Looking at the Art” as well as a spiritual “Reflection” based on the piece itself. It is our hope that these words will provide some starting points for your own reflection. It is our hope that after reading these and viewing the actual piece of art in the museum you will deepen your own Advent journey.
2023
First Week of Advent
Looking at the art:
The Visitation
15th Century-16th Century Attributed to Jean Bellegambe, French (c. 1480–1534-1536)
Object Type: PAINTINGS
Creation Place: Europe, France
Medium and Support: Oil on wood panel
Accession Number: 67-P-22
Current Location: Art Museum : 15-16 C Gallery
This work is attributed to the fifteenth-century French painter Jean Bellegambe who specialized in diptychs and triptychs, double and triple folding panels that were installed above church altars to inspire the faithful with portrayals of biblical scenes. This piece could very well have been one of those panels.
The story is, of course, about two women, both cousins and pregnant, one younger and the other older, who come together to rejoice in the children they bear and the prophetic import these births will have on the world. Mary on the left is carrying Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah and on the right her cousin Elizabeth is bearing John who will eventually baptize Jesus. Let us look at some shapes to see how the structure informs the message and supports the story. See how Mary’s tall figure on the left counterbalances the tall tree on the right. The tree also serves the purpose of dividing the panel in two to emphasize the distinct roles of the women and their children. But the essence of the story is not about division; it’s about coming together from afar, full circle. Note how the women’s arms and hands, almost clasping, form an arc that is repeated in reverse by the curve of the bushes behind the women to form a complete circle.
Like many artists of the fifteenth century this artist contemporizes the biblical scene permitting the faithful of his day to identify with it. Mary has come from afar to enter the house of Zacharias and greet Elizabeth, but the house portrayed here in a blue shadow is far from a dwelling one would see in biblical Palestine. It’s more like a contemporary building found in northern France or southern Belgium where Bellegambe was from. In addition, the two women are fair skinned, and Mary’s hair is decidedly blond. Not the complexion one expects to find in the Middle East but rather in northern Europe.
Painters of that time were fond of including symbolic animals to support the underlying message or story they were depicting. What is that on the ground between the two women? It’s a butterfly. A symbol of transformation and regeneration, the butterfly here announces the births of Jesus and his predecessor John, both of whom will usher in a transformation from the old order of politics and religious practice to generate a new order of hope and peace.
Reflection:
One of the aspects of the Visitation, Mary’s journey to visit her cousin Elizabeth, that has always struck me is the ordinariness of it. It is a journey of one relative to another. The journey may indeed have been prompted by an angel’s message but it is at its simplest a journey, a visit, something we normally do not pay much attention to in terms of history and story. We do not hear about the visitation of the Smiths to the Jones or of the visitation of Joe home for the holidays. Why then is this visitation so different? Why do Luke write about this particular event and why does Bellegambe choose to paint this particular scene from Luke’s gospel.
For me the answer may be in the very ordinariness of it. In the painting, for example, there are workers going about the business of maintaining the property or farm. The appropriate person, Elizabeth, has come out to greet Mary and offer the appropriate hospitality while life continues on around them both. She is prepared to offer the expected response of receiving a guest, hospitality and welcome. Elizabeth, however, is surprised at the guests that she meets. While she may have been expecting Mary, or been surprised at her arrival, the child she is carrying leaps for joy at the arrival of Mary and her unborn child. The Greek conveys far more than leaps. The word is the same one that is used when David dances with wild abandonment before the Ark of the Covenant when it is being brought up to Jerusalem. Elizabeth’s unborn child dances within her with wild abandonment when Elizabeth hears Mary’s voice. Who is this woman whom Elizabeth thought she knew and who is the child that she is carrying?
This, for me, is the heart of the Visitation, the willingness to be surprised, to be “visited” by God in the ordinariness of life. Elizabeth, going about the duties of hospitality, is surprised by God. She realizes that the child that Mary carries is no ordinary child. She feels in her very body, her unborn child dancing within her, the presence of God. How often do I sense that God is present in the ordinariness of life or do I expect that I will only find God in the special moments of life? As Lasallians we are encouraged to find the presence of God in our daily lives. For me that often means taking time to be quiet, to find God in nature, in the scriptures, but La Salle also reminds us that we find God in our students, in each other. Am I willing to see God in the ordinary moments of life, to be surprised at who I greet in the course of the day? To feel my spirt dance with wild abandonment because I have encountered God in the day to day offering of hospitality and friendship.
How will I be visited today? How will I be a moment of God’s visitation for another?
Second Week of Advent
Looking at the art:
The Nativity
c. 1500
16th Century
23 x 14 1/4 in. (58.4 x 36.2 cm)
Jan Provost, Flemish, (1465–1529)
Object Type: PAINTINGS
Creation Place: Europe
Medium and Support: Oil on panel
Accession Number: 72-P-10
Current Location: Art Museum : 15-16 C Gallery
The familiar scene of the birth of Jesus is the subject of Jan Provost’s Nativity. We see the baby Jesus lying on a bed of straw and gesturing a blessing, his mother Mary and foster father Joseph adoring at his side and stable animals to complete the picture. Not too familiar to us however is the inclusion of other scenes playing out in the background simultaneously in the same panel. In the background on the left we see an angel announcing the birth of Jesus to shepherds tending their flock. This is derived directly from the Christmas narrative. On the right we get a glimpse of two stately ladies walking in a path outside the walls of a Renaissance era city, possibly a nod to the birthplace of Provost in the Low Countries of Europe. See also the workers building up the walls of the stable. These scenes and realistic details are consistent with Provost’s early Renaissance Netherlandish emphasis on daily life and simple piety.
Like other early Renaissance painters Provost was learning and experimenting with portraying a third dimension of depth on a two-dimensional canvas. He knew how to make the background figures smaller than the foreground figures, but he had difficulty with architecture. See how the left pillar holding up the stable roof comes into the foreground to intersect with Mary but the right pillar holding up the same roof recedes into the middle ground behind the monk. Was this a mistake or was it his intent to put the monk on the same visual plane with Mary, thus bolstering the influence of the monk?
Who is the monk? Most assuredly he represents the donor commissioning the work. He quite possibly belonged to a Cistercian monastery in the tradition of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the abbot credited with reforming monasticism and building the Cistercian order. Could it be that the two workers building up or repairing the stable walls with their tools represent a tribute to Bernard’s reforming of monasticism and thus fulfills conditions of the commission?
Not to be overlooked is the theological import of the Incarnation. See the image of God the Father lodged and framed in the apex of the panel and pointed to by the gable of the stable’s roof. God the Father emits His word which is iconized in the writing on the scroll blowing in the spirit-wind and becomes flesh in the person of Jesus just born.
Reflection:
Today’s reflection is on the Provost Nativity. I find myself conflicted since there is so much in the story that is rich in theological meaning and ripe for moments of reflection, yet I keep thinking that I know the story so well and, after all these many Christmases, is there really anything new. When I stop though and look at this painting, I am struck by two things. First the stable is not my usual image. I think of a cave or a rough building with a roof and a wall or two to protect the animals. In this painting, the walls are being built, or are they being torn down. The stable here almost seems like a gazebo, open to the world around it. The child is vulnerable, unprotected. From the moment of Christ’s birth, he is accessible to us. There are no firm walls yet that protect him or to keep him from us or keep us from him. That leads me to the second striking image in the painting, the scrolls with words that seem to come out of the mouth of the Christ child and the monk. For me they represent a dialog between the Christ child and the monk. The child is not only vulnerable but wants to be in dialog, in relationship with us.
The Incarnation, God becoming human, is not only a moment of vulnerability on God’s part but it is a visitation, an invitation to us to be in dialog with God. God, in the person of Jesus has become vulnerable, become human. Why? It seems to me that becoming human is God’s way of making it easier for me to enter into a relationship with God. It is overwhelming for me, and more than a little intimidating, to think about being intimate with the creator of the universe, but with a newborn there is potential, there is an invitation into a relationship that can grow. For me then, the question is how this Christmas season will allow me to renew and deepen my dialog with the God who invites me into relationship, not just during the Christmas season but for the entire year. How will I allow myself to be vulnerable, not only to God, but to those individuals that I live, work and journey with? How will I stay in dialogue with God by being in dialogue with my fellow human beings?
Third Week of Advent
Looking at the art:
Mary (La Sainte-Marie)
1898
19th Century
34 1/8 x 42 5/8 in. (86.7 x 108.3 cm)
Henry Ossawa Tanner, American, (1859–1937)
Current Location: Art Museum : 19 C Gallery
Today we focus on a scene painted in 1898 depicting only Mary and just a suggestion of the child Jesus. The painter of this unconventional picture was unconventional himself. Henry Ossawa Tanner was born in Pittsburgh, moved to Philadelphia as a teenager and when he started painting, he expatriated to France breaking societal patterns to become the first African American man to receive international acclaim as a painter. His subsequent visits to the Holy Land enabled him to study in detail the environment where Jesus, Mary and Joseph lived. But there is no Holy Family in this scene. It’s about Mary.
We see here Mary dressed in local garb and sitting on a rug atop the stone floor of a small, unfurnished, cold-looking room. The only hint of a divine child is the halo above a crumpled pile of blankets. Head tilted, Mary looks forlorn as she gazes upon the blankets. Clearly, Tanner wants us to imagine what she is thinking and feeling. Is she feeling alone, frightened, unsure of what the future holds? What do you think?
Look at the single window opening in the thick stone wall. It is the only source of light that casts a shadow on the opposite wall. Of course, it is a shadow of Mary, but it is also the shadow of the jug that sits on the windowsill. Why so? In Christian iconography Mary is repeatedly evoked as a vessel, that immaculately conceived body containing the divine Son of God. In fact, there are three vessels in this picture. Consider the famous Litany of Loreto which calls Mary “Spiritual Vessel,” Vessel of Honor,” and “Singular Vessel of Devotion.” Do you think that Mary as a woman vessel is feeling “empty” now that she has given birth to this Son of God?
So, this picture is all about Mary in her role as woman and mother. She was so important to Tanner as woman that he employed his own newlywed wife, a Swedish-American woman, as his model for this obliquely tender, locally sourced scene.
Reflection:
This has always been one of my favorite paintings. I am struck by the thoughtfulness of Mary, the focus, the attention she is paying to the small bundle beside her. The common view of the painting is that the halo indicates the presence of the Christ child somewhere in that bundle of cloth. She has already had such a journey, literally and figuratively, to give birth to this child. Angelic messengers, a strenuous trip just as she is about to give birth, and then there were those shepherds talking about another angel, no angels, telling them who this child is. Is he really the Messiah, the one who is to save all of us. Is that really harder to believe than anything else that has happened so far. If he is the Messiah, why has his birth been so hard, in a backwater town. Will his life be as hard?
I have often wondered why Mary’s clothes are trimmed in red, the color or blood. Does Mary have some idea of what is in store? After all, did not Simeon say some strange things at the temple, something about “destined for the rise and fall of many” and “a sword shall pierce your heart as well.” What can all of this mean?
Tanner saw Mary as a “model of faith” one of the reasons that he painted her so often. So, while there is sadness in Mary’s face, I cannot help but think that with a woman of faith there also has to be hope. This child has come to save us. That alone is a message of hope. Mary must be hopeful that no matter what is to come, what darkness, the light that this child brings will not be overcome. That no matter what evil this child faces he will always choose love. Amid such tender caring and concern in the face of Mary that is the question for me this Christmas. Can I hold on to hope? In a world that is torn by war and genocide and seems to be less and less God’s world can I sit with Mary and take comfort in the words of Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well, and all manner of thing will be well.”