Writing about the construction of Notre Dame de Paris, two very different experts said: When it was decided to rebuild a cathedral, the bishop, the canons, rich townsfolk, and neighbouring landowners made the first offerings. The king was next approached, and usually gave a large sum. Collections were then made throughout the city and surrounding…
Art and the Female Principle Other than Our Lord Jesus Christ there has been no more frequent subject in Western figurative art than the Blessed Virgin Mary. If the object of the arts, when rightly ordered, is beauty, then it is fitting that the inspiration of so much Western material and musical culture be the…
Plato was an ultra-realist that stressed, to an extreme degree, objective reality, to the point of believing that concepts were individual entities with their own independent reality, i.e., the world of the “Forms.” The soul actually existed in this intelligible world prior to existing in the body, and will go back to it once the…
One hundred years ago today, the city of Palestrina inaugurated the monument dedicated to the greatest son of this ancient town located 23 miles east-southeast of Rome, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, the “Prince of Music” born here in 1525. It is the fine statue by the Florentine sculptor Arnaldo Zocchi (1862-1940) which stands in the…
Editor’s Note: by way of a colleague and friend in Italy, we received the following translation for publication. It is a commentary on the much-discussed 2020 Vatican Nativity Scene. Translator’s Note: Vittorio Sgarbi is a very well-known figure in Italian public life, who has served in several political offices, including the ministry in charge of…
Increasingly, I have found myself wondering why the world is so ugly. I do not mean the natural world, which always retains its created splendor, but the art and architecture of the modern world. It seems that almost nothing in modern art can achieve the beauty possessed by numerous cultures before our time. From the…
On November 28, 1680, 340 years ago, under the reign of Pope Innocent XI, the eleventh pope he served, the genius symbol of Roman Baroque art died in Rome at the age of 81: the architect, sculptor, painter, and set designer, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Naples 1598 – Rome 1680). Pope Urban VIII (1568-1644), with whom…
Recently I was walking through a college campus with my young son on my way to a Latin Mass. As we walked we saw a large modern “art” sculpture lifting itself from the earth. It was an abstract form of chaos made of metal with bright colors. It contorted in every direction as if the…
An Artistic Conflict Every one that is of the truth, heareth my voice. Pilate saith to him: What is truth? Excerpt, John 18:37-38, Douay-Rheims I propose that this one brief exchange summarizes the conflicted state of the arts in our post-modern, 20th and 21st century experience. For there is sacred art, and there is secular or popular art, and…
On July 18, 410 years ago, 1610, occurred the death of Caravaggio, byname of Michelangelo Merisi (1571–1610), at the age of only 38. He died in Porto d’Ercole, Tuscany, while he was trying to return to Rome. Called the “cursed” painter in the nineteenth century, he was in love with reality as it is and…
At the top of a grassy hill in St. Louis, Missouri, a bronze apotheosis of the city’s patron sits erect on a giant steed, keeping watch over the city. Recently, this work of art, which has inspired St. Louisans for over a century, has come under scrutiny. All over the world, beautiful, priceless monuments are…
