Psalm 98: Cantate Domino

The psalm (in Latin) begins Cantate Domino. In English, that's Sing to the Lord. (Psalm 98:1) That's also the title of Barbara Hepworth's 1958 sculpture shown here. Do you see "Sing to the Lord" in the piece? 

Barbara Hepworth. Cantate Domino. 1958. Middleheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium.

Are they hands lifted in prayer? The abstracted shape of a lyre? Turned sideways, the design looks like hills in a landscape. Let the hills sing together for joy (98:8), the psalmist says. Nature and humans are singing together in praise of the Lord. How do you read this sculpture?

Made of cast bronze in an edition of six, Cantate Domino was intended to be the sculptor's headstone. She wrote to Norman Reid, Director of the Tate Gallery: 'It was intended to be reserved as a Headstone for my grave in St Ives ... I only mention this because I have always considered this a religious work' (27 Nov. 1967, Tate Gallery Acquisitions files).

All Saints Day: A Valley in France

Following All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day gives us the opportunity to remember all the saints of God - some who have been officially designated as saints, others who may not be known widely but are saints in our own lives. Near Carnoet, in the Brittany region of France, a valley is filled with statues of Celtic and Breton saints. A reference to the ancient menhirs and megaliths of Brittany, the valley installation is an open-air sanctuary dotted with sculptures of well-known saints like Patrick and Brigit, as well as less-widely known saints like Tugdual and Brieuc. The first statue was placed in 2008, and the hundredth statue several years ago. The only requirements for each statue is that it must be 10 feet tall and represent a saint who was in Brittany between the 3rd and 10th centuries. 

Visitors wandering among these saints keep their stories alive. 

For additional information on the Valley of the Saints, click here or here.

Exodus 34 and II Corinthians 3: The Reasons for Veils

What is the purpose of a veil? Is it to conceal? Is it to reveal in part? Is it to protect? Is it to hint? The story of the veil worn by Moses is told in Exodus (34:29-35) and then is referenced by Paul in II Corinthians 3:12-4:2. Over the course of those two texts, the veil is examined in a variety of ways.

Exodus reports that Moses wore a veil because the splendor of God reflected in Moses' face alarmed the people. Moses removed the veil when he went in to speak with God, so the veil does not screen Moses from God. Moses went before God bare-faced. The veil eases the relationship between Moses and the people. As did Moses, the veil stands between the people and God's glory.

In II Corinthians Paul appropriates Moses' veil as a recurring image in discussing the relationship between Jewish law, Jesus, and Christian understanding. He reinterprets Moses' veil as something that conceals a dying light. Certainly the law had a glory when it was given, but that glory, Paul asserts, like the law itself, is not the last word. It fades in the presence of a greater light. Paul goes on to announce Jesus as glory even greater, and also given by God. Jesus removes the veil from between the people and God's glory (notice that the veil is now worn by the people rather than Moses), allowing them to see God's undiminishing glory in Jesus.

For Moses, the veil was a necessary addition in his relationship with God's people. For Jesus, the veil must be removed so that people can see the full glory of God. Does that make the veil about concealment? Protection? Accommodation? Hindrance?

(Left) Rafaello Monti. Veiled Lady. c. 1860. Minneapolis, MN: Minneapolis Museum of Art.

(Right) Giuseppe Sanmartino. Veiled Christ. 1753. Capella Sansevero, Naples. 

For a group of sculptors - mostly Italian, but not all - the reason for veils was none of these things. For these artists, the reason for covering a face with a veil was to demonstrate virtuoso carving. These artists crafted images of women with their faces and heads veiled. Through the skill of the carver, one could "see" through marble, a decidedly non-transparent material.

Though these veiled sculptural  images are usually women, Italian artist Giuseppe Sanmartino was commissioned to create a full-length figure of Jesus Christ in death, wrapped in a transparent shroud. Through the sheer veil, the viewer sees the face of Christ, peaceful yet showing the signs of his painful death.

The veils in these sculptures don't obviously echo any of the uses described by Moses or Paul. But they may speak to a God who does not see as humans see, but who sees beyond and sees through and sees into humanity, which sometimes may seem as opaque as marble. Perhaps these sculptural images can remind us that though the people used a veil to add one degree of separation of themselves from God's glory, nothing - not even an attempt to hide our own faces - can separate us from the love (or glory) of God.

This week on Art&Faith Matters on Facebook, a veil where a face is revealed.
 For Transfiguration Sunday, click here, here, and here.

23:4

The gospel reading for Proper 26A(31A)/Pentecost 22A is Jesus' teaching, both to his disciples and to the crowd. The passage (Matthew 23:1-12) is filled with images that contrast what people of faith say and what they do. And that lack of consistency makes them bad role models, Jesus reminds his hearers. Wearing t-shirts with religious messages or listening to the radio station that plays religious music doesn't matter if by their actions they are unwilling to help their neighbor. In verse 4 the behavior is given specificity: They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.

Architecturally, the figure who bears weight is called a caryatid (if a female figure) or a telamon (if a male figure). These figures are also called atlas, atlantes or atlantids (referring to the mythological figure of Atlas who carries the weight of the sky on his shoulders). Visually these figures bear the weight of whatever architectural element is above them. The most famous caryatids are those on the Erectheum on Athens' acropolis. Vitruvius, the Roman architectural writer, helped coin the name caryatids, saying that the figures represented the women of Caryae. According to Vitruvius, when the Persians invaded Greece in the 5th century BCE, the town of Caryae sided with the Persians. When the Persians were defeated, the women of Caryae were forced to carry heavy burdens for the victors. These stone women, eternally bearing the weight of the porch entablature are the symbolic descendants of the women of Caryae. Though Vitruvius' account is less widely accepted as truth today, it shaped the history of meaning of this architectural form.

Caryatids on the Erectheum. Athens, Greece. http://odysseus.culture.gr/h/2/eh251.jsp?obj_id=973

So when Auguste Rodin begins sculpting in the nineteenth century, the story of the caryatid is of a female form carrying a heavy burden. Though these are free-standing sculptures, a smaller version is part of Rodin's Gates of Hell. This crouching figure gradually acquired the descriptive title of "Fallen Caryatid". 

Left: Rodin. Fallen Caryatid Carrying Her Stone. Modeled 1881, cast 1981. 

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/207511

Right: Rodin. Fallen Caryatid Carrying an Urn. Modeled 1883, cast 1981.

 https://metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/ 207510 

German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in his volume on Rodin wrote about the caryatid:

The Caryatid is no more the erect figure that bears lightly or unyieldingly the heaviness of the marble. A woman's form kneels crouching as though bent by the burden the weight of which sinks with a continuous pressure into all the figure's limbs. Upon every smallest part of this body the whole stone lies like the insistence of a will that is greater older and more powerful a pressure which it is the fate of this body to continue to endure. The figure bears its burden as we bear the impossible in dreams from which we can find no escape. Even the sinking together of the failing figure expresses this pressure and when a greater weariness forces the body down to a lying posture it will even then still be under the pressure of this weight bearing it without end. Such is the "Caryatid." (Rainer Maria Rilke, Auguste Rodin, 1919, p. 52) 

They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others. And sometimes the burden is just too much to bear. If we want to be other than the people Jesus condemns, we should probably be working on ways to help carry someone else's burden rather than forcing other people to carry burdens of our making.

For thoughts on the reading from Hebrew scripture (Joshua3:7-17) for this week in the lectionary, click here.

This week on Facebook, Art&Faith Matters considers the concluding verse of the gospel reading. Click on the Facebook link (on the blog page) below.

2 Samuel 7.1-16: What Kind of House?

I'll make you a house. No, I'll make you a house. No, I'll make YOU a house. That's the gist of the conversation between God and David in the reading from Hebrew scripture (2 Samuel 7:1-16, Proper 11B/Ordinary 16B/Pentecost 8). Ultimately it is David's descendant who will build a temple for God and the people, and it is David whose descendants will be made into a house.

The desire for a house, a real brick-and-mortar house is a human thing. The human need for the concrete is probably one reason for the incarnation. Jesus is God who becomes flesh and tabernacles among us. All well and good for Jesus, a descendant of David, but David really wanted God to have something more permanent than a tabernacle. David wanted God to have a house at least as impressive as David's own.

There is a fractured version of an old saying that says "People who live in glass houses shouldn't stow thrones." It's true. That was going to be a concern for David - stowing a throne, that is. The throne promised to his "house". The Lord promised David a house, though not exactly the kind he originally envisioned, and David will learn to be OK with that. It's almost as if he knew Psalm 127:1: "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain."

David's wasn't a glass house, but care is required for any kind of house, maybe especially the kind of house made of fragile, fallible human beings. And who should we trust more than God to build fragile, fallible beings into a house?

Tony Cragg. Clear Glass Stack. 1999. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamacki, Auckland, New Zealand. 

For thoughts on Mark 6:30-34, 53-56, click here.

Lifted Up

The verses before the familiar John 3:16 recall the text from Numbers 21 that is the Lent 4B reading from Hebrew scripture. Moses is instructed to make a metal snake and place it on a pole (which brings to mind the prohibition of images in the second word of the decalogue...but that's another post). Anyone who is "snakebit" only has to look at the image and be healed. That episode is what is called to mind before we are reminded of how much God loved the world (John 3:13-22).

Today, atop Mount Nebo is a sculpture by Italian artist Giovanni Fantoni. Mount Nebo is identified in the last chapter of Deuteronomy as the vantage point from which Moses is given a view into the Promised Land. Fantoni's sculpture, called the Brazen Serpent Sculpture (also Serpent Cross Sculpture), illustrates the story from Numbers but overlays it with Christ's crucifixion. The large metal piece features simplified forms expressed through various textures, lines and combinations of forms.

 

Brazen Serpent Sculpture by Giovanni Fantoni on Mount Nebo

Placed by the Franciscans at their friary on Nebo, the sculpture easily reads as the crucifixion from a distance. It's form also bears a resemblance to the staurogram, a letterform combination of the Greek letters tau and rho. The tau resembles an uppercase T while the rho resembles the uppercase P. Superimposed over one another, the letters resemble a crucified figure on a tau cross (a cross shaped like an uppercase T). The two letters are both part of stauros, Greek for "cross" (stauroo is "to crucify"). Scribes began to use the graphic shortcut as the abbreviation for cross or crucifixion in Greek texts.

Iconography ("image writing") at its most basic, the staurogram has been advanced as the earliest depiction of the crucifixion, which also puts this small symbol at the very beginning of Christian art and symbolism.

These texts, objects and images trace the cross from a Mosaic antecedent through earliest Christian reflection on Christ's cross and crucifixion through contemporary expressions of the stories of our faith. As we move through Lent toward Good Friday, the cross looms larger and larger, just as it loomed over Jesus as he moved closer and closer to Jerusalem.

A rooster, a tortoise and Ephesians. See how it all comes together on Art&Faith Matters on Facebook. Click on this link. 

For additional A&FM thoughts on the Lent 4B readings, click here.