With ‘Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance,’ Joseph Luzzi has written a fascinating narrative that tells the story of the drawings and seeks to revise our understanding of the phenomenon traditionally known as the Renaissance.
History
Posted inFaith, Vantage Point
From 1919: President Éamon de Valera on Ireland’s right to independence
In advance of a visit to the United States in 1919, Irish patriot and politician Éamon de Valera argued in America’s pages that Ireland deserved full independence from England.
Posted inPodcasts, Politics & Society
Podcast: How should Catholic institutions make reparations for the sin of slavery?
Laura Masur joins “The Gloria Purvis Podcast” this week to talk about her work recovering fragments of Black American history from what she calls “sites of memory” or places where enslaved persons dwelled, often in Catholic-run institutions.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Remembering John Hope Franklin, the premier historian of the Black experience
John Hope Franklin wrote of the African American struggle for justice for seven decades. At his death, he was called “the first great American historian to reckon the price owed in violence, autocracy and militarism.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Theater
Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan bring love and revolution to life in ‘The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window’
A lovingly crafted new revival of “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music makes a fresh case for reconsideration of Lorraine Hansberry’s less well-known second play, which followed the classic “A Raisin in the Sun.”
Posted inFaith, The Good Word
Ash Wednesday: a great idea about what’s right with us
History and Ash Wednesday illustrate a mutual truth: Ideas are much easier to suggest than to suppress.
Posted inArts & Culture, Interviews
The Irish priest who outwitted the Nazis
My Father’s House centers on Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, a real life Irish priest who, with the help of an electic group of accomplices, helped shuttle escaped prisoners of war captives to safety.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: A Jesuit cardinal in Roman high society
A new collective tribute by a baker’s dozen of erudite specialists adds up to an erudite, if in some parts abstruse, overview of the remarkable life and ecclesiastic career of Cardinal Sforza Pallavicino.
Posted inFaith, Features
Slavery and the Catholic Church: It’s time to correct the historical record
The history of the church was nothing close to a steady, if interrupted, march to eliminate slavery.
Posted inArt, Arts & Culture
Uncovering the Jesuit influence on Vermeer, one of the Netherlands’ greatest painters
Johannes Vermeer’s renowned use of light may have been more than just an artistic statement; it seems likely it was a spiritual one, as well.