Taking place at Buckfast Abbey, a Benedictine monastery set in the beautiful Devon countryside, the Maryvale Institute has offering a short residential summer school that will take place in August and which offers you the chance to study Catholic traditions in art. Called Teaching the Catholic Faith Through Art it is held at Buckfast Abbey in Devon (there are more photos of the abbey in its setting at below). It is taught by Dr Caroline Farey and myself and those who attend have the option to deepen their studies afterwards by enrolling on the degree level diploma, Art, Inspiration and Beauty from a Catholic Perspective. The cost for the weekend including tuition and full board is just 275 GBP and the dates are August 15-18th.

Readers on this side of the pond who might feel that its too far to go need not be discouraged: as some of you will already know, this course is also offered in the US also. The residential weekend is in July at the Maryvale Center at the Diocese of Kansas City, Kansas. As well as this course about art theory, in Kansas they are offering a 5-day course in which students can learn to paint in the style of the illuminations of the English gothic psalters, such as the Westminster Psalter. Beginners and experienced artists welcome. Posters for all three are shown below, and from these you can get the contact details.

The Maryvale Institute is the only Higher Institute of Religious Sciences in the English speaking world that has full pontifical status.…

I spent Easter Week in Berkeley, CA recently and so as I always try to do when visiting a town I went to visit the local art gallery. It is amazing what treasures even a local gallery can have sometimes. Berkeley is the home of hippies and is where the Sixties began, so I was ready also for plenty of whacky stuff. However, it is also the gallery of one of the most famous and wealthiest universities in the US which was founded well before this so hoped for at least something good. The website even mentioned that there was a Rubens in the collection.

It didn’t look to hopeful when we approached the gallery and the exterior looked like this…

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Here are some photo’s of a new mosaic just installed in Wales, designed and made by Aidan Hart.  (H/t David Woolf) I have taken the them from his website, here. Aidan’s photos give us a sense of how it was produced as well as the what the final product looks like. The church, St Martins is an Anglican church in Cardiff on a town street and the mosaic is on the exterior. I like this – we must not underestimate the power of beauty and the face of Christ especially to draw people in to God. I found a photo of the church before the mosaic was placed there on the internet, see below. I hope the congregation will not think it is undignified that it includes in the pawn shop nextdoor. I personally think that the juxtaposition of the mosaic and shop emphases how we must think about beauty reaching out and touching people in the everyday activities of life and competing with all the advertising and other imagery that is out there.

The method that Aidan used, if I have understood him correctly, is the ‘Ravenna’ or ‘double reverse’ method that involves putting tracing the design onto a temporary wet ‘putty ‘base (a slow drying mortar or plaster) and then placing the tesserae into the putty so that the artist can see the design developing as it would be seen eventually. Then a piece of glued linen is stuck to what is now the open face.…

Is this the Franciscan message? On the final Monday of Lent, Mass at Thomas More College was celebrated by one of the monks from St Benedict’s Abbey in Still River. It is always a pleasure to have them here because they celebrate Mass and chant the Latin so beautifully. Beyond this, their homilies are always interesting and stimulating.

The gospel passage on this occasion was about Martha and Mary: Martha tended to the guests and Mary washed Jesus feet with expensive nard, a fragrant ointment. Unusually, (in my experience at any rate), the homily spoke not so much to the contrast between Martha and Mary, but between Mary and Judas. It was the latter who suggested that the money spent on nard would have been better given to the poor. Here was a lesson about allocation of resources.  Mary made the right choice, we were told, in choosing Christ even before giving to the poor. Then an even more interesting point was made. There is an equivalent choice facing us today every time we have to decide about having beautiful churches and art, intricate vestments, ornate jewel-studded chalices and so on. Is it right to direct money to these things when there is poverty? The answer is yes when these things, through the liturgy, elevate the souls of the faithful to Christ and this is greater than giving to the poor.

However, in order to understand how this can be so, some additional points must be made.…

In some ways it is surprising that I became an artist (apart from the lack of talent in painting that is…before someone comments!) I always find that music can transport me more readily and more powerfully than any painting can.

At one point I was deciding whether or not I wanted to be an artist or a banjo player (I am being serious – Appalachian clawhammer style…but that’s another story); but the point here is that in the end I chose art. The reason was that although I found listening to music more compelling than looking at art, I always find painting more absorbing than practising scales. And if I was to be a musician, practising is how I was going to have to spend most of my working day. So picked the activity I enjoyed most.

I have described before how the chant and the music of Palestrina that I heard at the London Oratory drew me into the Church (see Glory be to God for the Brompton Oratory). This is not the only time that I have been moved to tears by the beauty of music. Before I became a Catholic I would very occasionally have these experiences where its beauty struck to the soul and stopped me in my tracks, I could feel myself breaking out in goosepimples and the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. Somehow I would feel vulnerable and embarrassed, as though it was opening up my soul for all to see and it was out of my control.…

Educators take note! Here is the greatest source of wisdom. When writing about Jean Leclercq’s Love of Learning and the Desire for God, I referred to his description of the tension that exists between the  different educational approaches of the scholastic and the monastics schools . The former characterised (in part) by relying of very dry, technical language of logic; the latter relying on more accessible language that draws on sources such as scripture more directly, which while more poetic and beautiful poetic might be criticised for lacking precision). As Leclercq points out, when the spiritual life of the person is centred on the liturgy, then either form of education can open the door to full knowledge, in love and through God’s grace. The liturgy is the place where all of this can be synthesized and one is immersed in God’s wisdom and this, deep in the heart of the person, is where we form the culture.

St Thomas, who is the first name who comes to mind when one thinks of scholastics so his attitude to the liturgy would be of interest in this regard. In his little book Thomas Aquinas and the Liturgy, David Berger directs us to Thomas’s special regard for the psalms and in the Divine Office as source of grace and wisdom, which reinforces the point that Leclerqc made. This regard for psalms arises because Thomas considered that within the single book of the psalms they contain the entire content of theology.  …

Following on from last week’s relief carvings of the Entry in Jerusalem, here are some images relating to the Passion: two Western 15th century relief carvings appropriate for Easter – the crucifixion and a deposition; and late gothic painting of a deposition.

The carvings are English in a gothic style (where there was no Renaissance). They are carved in alabaster which was quarried in Nottinghamshire. What is interesting is that when painting in the same century, the Flemish artist Rogier Van Der Weyden painted his figures as though they were occupying a foot-wide space projecting out to plane of the painting. Employing, very clearly, a far greater degree of naturalism than the English sculptors did, he nevertheless painted a backdrop so as to eliminate the chance of the illusion of too great a depth.

All of this helps to ensure that there is a balance between adherence to natural appearances, which communicates visual realities; and stylization through some departure from strict naturalism, which lends a symbolic quality to the image and communicates invisible realities. Keeping the image to a space that doesn’t deviate far from the plane of the painting and restricting the illusion of depth communicates the presence of the heavenly dimension, which is outside space (and time).

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This year I will be attending for the second time the ‘Acton University‘. This is a residential course that takes place in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The dates are June 18-21.

The Acton Institute is an organisation devoted to the promotion of a free and virtuous society. It was at Acton that I first heard of the connection between anthropology and economics. The last time I attended was my first and in the introductory lectures the speakers described how economics is a reflection of network of social interractions. And the nature of these interractions derives from our understanding of the human person, which in turn comes from Catholic social teaching.

Each person attending must sign up for a an integrated series of lectures so that each builds on the last. It is cleverly worked out so that the first lecture you choose restricts your choice for the second and so on.  As this is my second year there, I will be doing a different set of classes, that build on what I learnt last time.

As a Catholic I tended to pick courses that focus on Catholic social teaching or are consistent with it. They seem to touch on a whole range of subjects that cover topics as varied as economics, theology, public policy, globalization, the environment. What impressed me is that far from being the detached libertarians unconcerned with morality that some had portrayed them as, they were all profoundly interested in the poor and the foundations of a good and moral society.…

Here are some images selected, at least initially, with Palm Sunday in mind. They have three things in common: they are of the same subject – the Entry into Jerusalem; they are both relief carvings; and they are both by Lorenzo Ghiberti. Ghiberti, who worked in the first half of the 15th century, is famous for creating the bronze doors of the Baptistry in Florence. The first is wood polychrome, that is painted wood, and the second is from the north doors of the Baptistry, cast into bronze.

Relief carving commonly seen in the sacred art of the Eastern church (I have written about this here…). Its limited three-dimensionality ensures a flatness that suits the intention of the iconographic style to portray the heavenly realm, which is outside time and space. I would love to see artists from the Roman Church following the example of their Eastern brethren and producing relief carvings in Western forms. The most obvious place to start would be to develop the Western iconographic forms, such as the Romanesque as there are close parallels with what the East has done. However there is relief carving in more naturalistic forms too. Ghiberti worked in the period when the Renaissance and the gothic overlapped and to my eye, the polychrome reminds me of a gothic carving, while the bronze relief seems to have aspects of a classical naturalism that points forward the masters of a hundred years later.

Once again, Dr Caroline Farey and myself will be teaching the summer residential weekends for the diploma offered by the Maryvale Institute.  There will be a five-day icon painting class afterwards taught by myself. 

It is offered in the US through the Maryvale Centre at the Diocese of Kansas City, Kansas. The dates of the first residential weekend are July 12-15 (Friday-Monday). The link for courses are here. Contact Kimberly Rode from the archdiocese for information about both. The icon painting class will be in the week days afterwards, and will be focussing on Western gothic style, as seen, for example in the illuminate manuscripts such as the Westminster Psalter. Below I have shown an example of work done myself based upon this.

For those who are interested in doing the diploma through the UK, this year the residential weekend will be at beautiful Buckfast Abbey in Devon from Thursday 15th August to Sunday 18th. For me details contact Dr Caroline Farey in England at bdivdirector@maryvale.ac.uk

The Maryvale Institute is the only Higher Institute of Religious Sciences – graduate and post-graduate level educational institution – with pontifical status in the English speaking world. It is good news that itss courses are now offered in the US via the Diocese of Kansas City, Kansas. This is not your standard online course – the Maryvale Institute has developed its own method of teaching at a distance through use of expertly designed coursebooks and attendance periodically at residential weekends.…