Artful Contemplation: Praying with art during Lent and Easter

For the nearly two millennia since the faith emerged from the catacombs, Christians have employed art—and artists—to build churches, adorn them and inspire the faithful. As a result Christianity has made an enormous contribution to art. Church art in all its forms, from priests’ vestments and altarpieces to statues, gargoyles, bas-reliefs and stained glass windows, also educated illiterate persons and young children in the faith. It still does.

During the Middle Ages church art provided most of the images an average European saw in a lifetime. It was virtually the only visual medium available to the masses—today’s Internet, television, film and print media together in one venue. Even after the invention of the printing press, when Christians prayed with texts—psalms, parables and memorable passages from Scripture and other religious classics—they continued to use images in meditation and prayer. Private chapels in aristocratic homes contained at least one art object, typically a painting or statue. Christians of means also bought small icons, portable enough to take with them and use regularly. When a literate middle class gradually developed, it adopted such devotions.

Today, some of the greatest Christian art remains in churches, mostly in Europe, but much has been acquired by museums around the world. Following the example of our ancestors in the faith, why not use the great treasury of Christian art as a source of prayer, meditation and devotion?

A friend who visited a state-owned art museum in Moscow not long ago was surprised to observe people kneeling, bowing their heads and praying reverently in public before the icons and other Christian works on display. Some worshipers left a flower or a candle on the floor beside a work. Apparently such gestures are commonplace. That these Christians had encountered the art outside a church seemed to matter not at all, since the art itself was seen in that culture and among the Orthodox as worthy of veneration.

Our culture, by contrast, tends to fragment experience, keeping each different type discretely in its place. As a result we may turn off religious sensibility in the workplace and in public, and turn it on at church or another explicitly religious event. Still, religious experience can break through to us in art.

Museum Insights

On first seeing Vincent van Gogh’s paintings from Arles, an extensive collection exhibited at the Watch an audio slide show on how to pray with art.

A Sampler of Art for Lent

The Art Institute of Chicago owns “The Crucifixion,” by Lucas Cranach the Elder; “Study of Arms and Legs of Christ Crucified,” a pen-and-ink study by Eugène Delacroix full of motion and life; “Christ on the Cross,” a rubbing in native style by Paul Gauguin; “Christ Carrying the Cross,” an unfamiliar oil worth seeing by a Bavarian master, from the Worcester Collection; and “Descent From the Cross,” one of two by Rembrandt. However, only two images of the more than 100 I viewed online are currently on view in the museum: “Black Cross, New Mexico,” Georgia O’Keeffe’s stark, bodyless cross dominating a Southwest landscape; and “The Crucifixion,” by Francisco de Zurbarán, a large painting against a dark background that many will find appealing for reflection. (www.artic.edu/aic)

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, contains a marble sculpture, “Christ at the Column”; “The Last Supper Frieze,” from 12th-century Spain, a fresco transferred to canvas; Battista Tiepolo’s etching “St. Joseph Carrying the Infant Jesus”; a small bronze plaque from 17th-century Italy of “The Flagellation”; and a stunning oil by Simone Cantarini, “The Risen Christ,” in which Christ appears to fly over the bodies of sleeping soldiers. Unfortunately, many images in the collection are not yet online. (www.mfa.org)

The Getty Center, Los Angeles, has hundreds of prospects, among which are: Simon Bening’s “The Agony in the Garden,” a small painting with gold leaf on parchment, one of a number of paintings by him in this format, including “Denial of St. Peter,” “Christ, Caiaphas,” and other illustrations; a footlong corpus carved from wood in 1600, the kind of devotional object used for millennia; carved wooden panels by Christoph Daniel Schenck, including “The Penitent St. Peter,” anguished at having betrayed Jesus; and a pen-and-ink finished drawing by Pellegrino Tibaldi, “The Incredulity of Thomas.” (www.getty.edu/museum)

The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, has not put its permanent collection online for browsing; but the museum-selected highlights from its European art collection include “The Denial of St. Peter,” by Nicolas Tournier, a large, dramatic and colorful depiction with six major figures, making Peter’s denial all the more public. The folk art category features “Jesus on the Cross,” a carved and painted crucifix by Ulysses Davis. (www.high.org)

This article appears in March 3 2008.