‘Mid-Lent is passed and Easter’s near, The greatest day of all the year’ ... John Betjeman, an Anglo-Catholic poet

Patrick Comerford

Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984), who was the British Poet Laureate from 1972, once described himself in Who’s Who as a “poet and hack.” He had a passionate interest in Victorian architecture and in railways, and contributed to guide books as well as being a popular figure on television.

Betjeman was a troublesome poet who persisted in believing, and in his poetry he explored his thoughts about his Anglican faith, about Englishness and about Christianity in general. He remains one of the most significant literary figures of our time to declare his Christian faith, and one of the great makers of the Christian imagination in the last century.

In a letter written on Christmas Day 1947, he said: “Also my view of the world is that man is born to fulfil the purposes of his Creator i.e. to Praise his Creator, to stand in awe of Him and to dread Him. In this way I differ from most modern poets, who are agnostics and have an idea that Man is the centre of the Universe or is a helpless bubble blown about by uncontrolled forces.”

During his life, he crossed paths at different times with two other great Anglican literary giants: the poet TS Eliot, who was once his teacher, and the apologist CS Lewis, who was his tutor in Oxford.

He was a lifelong friend of the Irish poet Louis MacNeice, and he spent time in Dublin during World War II, when he was an active parishioner in Clondalkin, Co Dublin. Many of his poems recount his encounters members of the Church of Ireland and his love of Church of Ireland country parish churches.

Early life, Oxford and CS Lewis

Magdalen College, Oxford ... John Betjeman was an undergraduate, and CS Lewis was his tutor (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

He was born John Betjemann on 28 August 1906 in Highgate, and he was baptised in Saint Anne’s Church, Highgate Rise. Although his family was of Dutch ancestry, on the outbreak of World War I his parents, Mabel (née Dawson) and Ernest Betjemann, changed the family name to the less German-sounding Betjeman.

At Highgate School, his teachers included the poet TS Eliot. From there he went to the Dragon School, Oxford, and Marlborough College, Wiltshire, where his friends and contemporaries included the Irish poet Louis MacNeice, the spy Anthony Blunt, and the illustrator and cartoonist Graham Shepard.

At Marlborough too, his reading of the works of Arthur Machen (1863-1947) won him over to High Church Anglicanism – it was a conversion that would influence and shape his writing and his work in the arts for the rest of the life.

Betjeman entered Oxford with difficulty, having failed the mathematics part of the matriculation exam, and was admitted to Magdalen College. However, his tutor, CS Lewis, regarded him as an “idle prig,” while Betjeman found Lewis unfriendly, demanding and uninspiring, describing him as being “breezy, tweedy, beer-drinking and jolly.”

Betjeman appears to have spent most of his time at Oxford indulging his social life, developing his interest in church architecture, and following his own literary pursuits. He had a poem published in Isis, the university magazine, and in 1927 was the editor of Cherwell, the student newspaper whose contributors included WH Auden, Graham Greene, Cecil Day-Lewis and Evelyn Waugh.

But Betjeman never completed his degree at Oxford. He twice failed the compulsory Scripture examination, Divinity, known to students as “Divvers,” and was later allowed to enter the Pass School. His tutor, CS Lewis, told the tutorial board he thought Betjeman would not achieve an honours degree of any class. Betjeman passed “Divvers” at a third sitting, but finally left Oxford at the end of Michaelmas term 1928 after failing the Pass School.

For the rest of his life he blamed his failure on CS Lewis, and the two writers were never reconciled, even later in life. Nonetheless, Betjeman had an enduring love of Oxford, and received an honorary doctorate in 1974.

After Oxford, he worked briefly as a private secretary, school teacher and film critic for the Evening Standard before becoming an assistant editor at the Architectural Review. His first book of poems, Mount Zion, was published in 1931 by an Oxford friend, Edward James.

Betjeman developed the Shell Guides with Jack Beddington for Britain’s growing number of motorists. By the beginning of World War II, 13 Shell Guides had been published. Betjeman had written Cornwall (1934) and Devon (1936), and later he collaborated on Shropshire (1951) with his friend the artist John Piper (1903-1992), whose works include the stained glass windows in Coventry Cathedral and the East Window in the chapel in Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield.

Betjeman in Ireland

John Betjeman and family at Collinstown House, Clondalkin, Co Dublin, where they lived in the 1940s

Betjeman was rejected for active service in World War II but he moved to the Ministry of Information, and came to Dublin in 1941 as the British press attaché to the British High Commissioner, Sir John Maffey (later Lord Rugby), working from 50 Upper Merrion Street, Dublin.

From 1941 to 1943, the Betjemans lived at Collinstown House, Rowlagh, Clondalkin, where their daughter Candida was born. The Georgian house, which was rented from the Jameson distillery family, has since been demolished. John and Penelope Betjeman were registered vestry members in Saint John’s Church, where he regularly read the Sunday lessons.

He also had a close association with Monkstown Parish Church, which he regarded as John Semple’s greatest work of architecture, displaying his “original genius” and “eccentric taste.”

He said Monkstown Church was “one of my first favourites for its originality of detail and proportion.” He also liked Semple’s Saint Mary’s in Saint Mary’s Place, near Dorset Street, known to generations of Dubliners as “the Black Church” but now closed.

In 1943, he gave a lecture to the clergy of the Church of Ireland, “Fabrics of the Church of Ireland,” in which he made the point that the “fabric of the church is very much concerned with worship. The decoration of a church can lead the eye to God or away from him.”

As press attaché, his roles in Dublin included smoothing relations between Britain and the neutral Irish Free State, contributing to radio programmes such as Irish Half Hour aimed at Irish recruits in the British army, and entertaining important British visitors, including the actor Laurence Olivier, who was filming his production of Shakespeare’s Henry V on the Powerscourt Estate at Enniskerry, Co Wicklow.

According to documents unearthed by a recent Channel 4 documentary, Betjeman told Whitehall that the only way to lure Ireland into the war was to end partition. He said a “defensive union of the whole of Ireland” should be made “indissoluble,” he urged Britain to stop attacking the Irish Free State, including “anti-Irish articles and cartoons,” and he argued that “de Valera is Britain’s best friend in Ireland.”

Betjeman’s main sources of information included the journalists of The Irish Times he drank with in the Palace Bar in Fleet Street.

It is said the IRA planned to assassinate him, but the order was rescinded after he met an Old IRA man who was impressed by his works.

Betjeman wrote a number of poems based on his experiences in Ireland during the ‘Emergency,’ including ‘The Irish Unionist’s Farewell to Greta Hellstrom in 1922,’ which includes the refrain “Dungarvan in the rain.” ‘Greta’ was recently identified as Emily (Sears) Villiers-Stuart, an American married into a well-known West Waterford landed family.

In Dublin, he also became friends with Patrick Kavanagh. The Irish poet celebrated the birth of Betjeman’s daughter with his poem ‘Candida,’ and another well-known poem contains the line: “Let John Betjeman call for me in a car.”

When Betjeman’s posting in Dublin ended in 1943, his departure made the front page of The Irish Times. After World War II, he returned to London, his wife Penelope became a Roman Catholic in 1948, and the couple drifted apart. He later developed a close, life-long friendship with Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, whose family lived in Lismore Castle, Co Waterford.

Poet Laureate and popular poet

By 1948, Betjeman had published more than a dozen books, including five verse collections, and by 1958 sales of his Collected Poems had reached 100,000; it has now sold over two million copies. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1972, and this role, along with his popularity on television, brought his poetry to a wider audience.

He voiced the thoughts and aspirations of many ordinary people while retaining the respect of many of his fellow poets. He died at his home in Trebetherick, Cornwall, on 19 May 1984, and is buried at Saint Enodoc’s Church.

Betjeman and Church architecture

Betjeman had a love of Victorian architecture and was a founding member of the Victorian Society. But he also loved old Church of Ireland country parish churches. In ‘Ireland with Emily,’ he writes of those parish churches in rural Kildare, Roscommon, Westmeath and Laois, first published in New Bats in Old Belfries (1945):

There in pinnacled protection,
One extinguished family waits
A Church of Ireland resurrection
By the broken, rusty gates.
Sheepswool, straw and droppings cover,
Graves of spinster, rake and lover,
Whose fantastic mausoleum
Sings its own seablown Te Deum
In and out the slipping slates.

His favourite church in Ireland was the Church of Ireland parish church in Monkstown, Co Dublin. This church was originally built in 1789, but was remodelled in 1830 by John Semple. In 1974, Betjeman became the first patron of the Friends of Monkstown Church, corresponding regularly with the rector, Canon William Wynne. The church also featured in a BBC documentary, Betjeman’s Dublin.

Betjeman’s poetry and faith

Betjeman’s poems are often humorous, and his wryly comic verse is marked by a satirical and observant grace. As WH Auden observed, he was “at home with the provincial gas-lit towns, the seaside lodgings, the bicycle, the harmonium.”

His poetry is redolent of time and place, continually seeking out intimations of the eternal in the manifestly ordinary. In a 1962 radio interview he explained that he could not write about “abstract things,” preferring places and faces.

Betjeman was a troublesome poet who persisted in believing, and in his poetry he explored his thoughts about his Anglican faith, about Englishness and about Christianity in general.

He remains one of the most significant literary figures of our time to declare his Christian faith. In a letter written on Christmas Day 1947, he said: “Also my view of the world is that man is born to fulfil the purposes of his Creator i.e. to Praise his Creator, to stand in awe of Him and to dread Him. In this way I differ from most modern poets, who are agnostics and have an idea that Man is the centre of the Universe or is a helpless bubble blown about by uncontrolled forces.”

He was a practising Anglican and his religious beliefs and piety inform many of his poems. In response to a radio broadcast by the humanist Margaret Knight, he expressed his views on Christianity in The Listener in 1955 with his poem ‘The Conversion of St. Paul,’ which ends:

What is conversion? Not at all
For me the experience of St Paul,
No blinding light, a fitful glow
Is all the light of faith I know
Which sometimes goes completely out
And leaves me plunging into doubt
Until I will myself to go
And worship in God’s house below —
My parish church — and even there
I find distractions everywhere.

What is Conversion? Turning round
To gaze upon a love profound.
For some of us see Jesus plain
And never once look back again,
And some of us have seen and known
And turned and gone away alone,
But most of us turn slow to see
The figure hanging on a tree
And stumble on and blindly grope
Upheld by intermittent hope.
God grant before we die we all
May see the light as did St Paul.

The Mystery of Faith in four poems

Betjeman was a life-long Anglo-Catholic. In four poems – ‘Churchyards,’ ‘Advent 1955,’ ‘Christmas’ and ‘Lenten Thoughts of a High Anglican’ – Betjeman makes the mystery of the Christian faith a central issue.

Professor Kevin J. Gardner of Baylor University, in Faith and Doubt of John Betjeman: An Anthology of Betjeman’s Religious Verse (London: Continuum, 2006), says that in these four poems Betjeman finds the sudden and wondrous appearance of God in the most unlikely of places, giving him “a sense of spiritual security” that “renders him susceptible to the embrace of mystery and miracle.”

1, Churchyards

‘For churchyards then, though hollowed ground, / Were not so grim as now they sound’ … the ‘saddleback’ grave in Saint Michael’s Churchyard, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Although it is one of his less-known poems, ‘Churchyards’ is one of the four poems – alongside ‘Advent 1955,’ ‘Christmas,’ and ‘Lenten Thoughts of a High Anglican,’ and– in which Betjeman makes the mystery of the Christian faith a central issue.

He recalls the old English churchyards at the heart of village life, with their traditional headstones, and “Close to the church when prayers were said, / And Masses for the village dead.” Today, the churchyard is giving way to a “garden of rest,” although “Graveyard’s a much more honest name.”

Mid-Lent is passed and Easter’s near
The greatest day of all the year
When Jesus, who indeed had died,
Rose with his body glorified.
And if you find believing hard
The primroses in your churchyard
And modern science too will show
That all things change the while they grow,
And we, who change in Time will be
Still more changed in eternity.

2, Advent 1955

‘A present that cannot be priced / Given two thousand years ago’ … the Christmas scene seen in a stained-glass window in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In the second of these poems, ‘Advent 1955,’ Betjeman talks about how people today take the real meaning of Christmas for granted. No one seems to appreciate the real gift anymore. Yet this is God’s gift, the greatest gift of all, the birth of Christ.

‘The time draws near the birth of Christ’.
A present that cannot be priced
Given two thousand years ago
Yet if God had not given so
He still would be a distant stranger
And not the Baby in the manger.

3, Christmas

The third of these four poems, ‘Christmas,’ is one of Betjeman’s most openly religious pieces, in which the last three stanzas proclaim the wonder of Christ’s birth in the form of a question: “And is it true...?”

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
A Baby in an ox’s stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?

And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare –
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

4, Lenten Thoughts of a High Anglican

His poem ‘Lenten Thoughts of a High Anglican,’ is another of the four poems in which Betjeman makes the mystery of the Christian faith a central issue.

If Betjeman’s imagination wanders in the joys of the beauty of worship and church architecture in ‘Sunday Morning, King’s Cambridge,’ then his mind wanders in the joys of beauty in a very different way in ‘Lenten Thoughts of a High Anglican’ – although he reaches similar conclusions.

‘Lenten Thoughts of a High Anglican’ – which in Betjeman’s drafts is titled ‘Lenten Thoughts in Grosvenor Chapel’ – was the first spontaneous poem he wrote after his appointment as Poet Laureate in October 1972. It was first published in the Sunday Express on 13 May 1973, and was included in the collection A Nip in the Air (1974).

Alongside the joviality found in many of his poems, this poem has an unusual tonal complexity. Betjeman describes a mysterious and sexually alluring woman who receives Holy Communion each Sunday. In an attempt to refocus the devotional attention of the parishioners, the priest tells them not to stare around or to be distracted during his celebration of the Eucharist.

But Betjeman’s experience contradicts the admonitions from the priest. In a peculiar way, through this mysterious and alluring woman, he suddenly becomes aware of the presence of God. The intrigue and arousal surrounding the women he describes as the “mistress” speaks to the poet of the mystery of God.

From 1972 until his death in 1984, Betjeman worshipped at the Grosvenor Chapel in London, which had been redesigned and transformed, with an Anglo-Catholic emphasis, in 1912 by Sir Ninian Comper in 1912. It was a favourite church of Bishop Charles Gore, and for many years the congregation included such people as the writer Rose Macaulay, author of The Towers of Trebizond.

In an interview with the Sunday Express, Betjeman said: “I saw this woman in church one Sunday. I didn’t know who she was. She was the most beautiful creature; and she had a slightly sad expression. And I didn’t even know her name – but it was probably all the better for that. She might have been terrible.”

“I like there to be a mystery between me and my beloved,” he continued. “And I don’t think there was anything wrong with looking at her in church, do you? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with loving the beauty of the human figure whether it’s in church or in the street … I’m not sure if [the poem] is any good but I hope it will please people. I’ve always wanted my verse to be popular because I wanted to communicate.”

Betjeman’s Dublin-born daughter, the author and journalist Candida Lycett Green, has identified the woman who inspired this poem as Joan Price, who used to go to church at Betjeman’s church, the Grosvenor Chapel. She was the Beauty Editor of Harpers & Queen – now Harper’s Bazaar – and was married to Michael Constantinidis, a sidesman at the Grosvenor Chapel.

Two important places of Anglican worship

Betjeman celebrates the social and cultural significance of the Church of England, yet he points to the social and spiritual failures of the Church, particularly the snobbery and hypocrisy of the clergy and churchgoers.

Two of his poems, ‘In Westminster Abbey’ (1940) and ‘Sunday Morning, King’s Cambridge’ (1954), are set in two of the most important centres of worship in England, one with political significance, the other with academic significance.

Taken together, these two poems give us a poet who believes deeply in Christ and who holds out hope for the Church of England and Anglicanism. One represents a place of public worship the closely links the Church with the political power in the nation; the other represents the very beauty of Anglican worship in a place associated not only with the academic, architectural and musical excellence of the nation.

1, In Westminster Abbey

‘Now I’ll come to Evening Service / Whensoever I have the time’ … ‘In Westminster Abbey’ is one of John Betjeman’s most savage satires (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

‘In Westminster Abbey’ is one of Betjeman’s most savage satires. This poem is a dramatic monologue, set during the early days of World War II, in which a woman enters Westminster Abbey to pray for a moment before hurrying off to “a luncheon date.”

She is not merely a chauvinistic nationalist, but also a racist, a snob and a hypocrite who is concerned more with how the war will affect her share portfolio than anything else. Her chauvinistic nationalism leads her speaker to pray to God “to bomb the Germans” … but “Don’t let anyone bomb me.” But her social and ethical lapses are a product of her spiritual state, which is a direct result of her nation’s spiritual sickness.

But she lets God know prayer and her relationship with God are low down her list of priorities:

Now I feel a little better,
What a treat to hear Thy Word,
Where the bones of leading statesmen
Have so often been interr’d.
And now, dear Lord, I cannot wait
Because I have a luncheon date.

2, Sunday Morning, King’s Cambridge

A Sunday morning at King’s College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Some years ago, in a book review in the Times Higher Education Supplement, Timothy Mowl of the University of Bristol described ‘Sunday Morning, King’s Cambridge’ as of the “least important” of Betjeman’s poems, “because it is about a place, not people in a place.”

Here he is at his best as he fuses together in one poem his different passions, and in ‘Sunday Morning, King’s Cambridge’ he presents a happy marriage of architectural detail, finely observed, and the sense of the worship of the eternal captured in a moment. He presents the beauty and splendour of Anglican worship, ablaze with colour.

In ‘Sunday Morning, King’s Cambridge,’ the moment of worship exists out of time as the living and the dead, the choir and the poet, join in the eternal praise of God. In this poem, Betjeman captures a joyful and spontaneous reaction, albeit an emotionally restrained expression, and a sense of wonder in the celebration of Anglican worship.

Stanza 1 describes the procession of the choir of the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, and the spiritually overwhelming aesthetics of the chapel – the stalls, the stained glass, and especially the stunning fan-vaulted ceiling, “a shower that never falls.”

Stanza 2 sees the poet’s mind wander away from the service as he imagines being outside among the “windy Cambridge courts.” Again there is a great emphasis on the vast variety of colour, but all the colours are transformed into “waves of pearly light” reflected off the Cambridge stone. The image suggests that the divine is not to be found exclusively in the chapel but in the world, the space that contains both God’s works and humanity’s work.

Stanza 3 is a geographical and historical expansion of these images and ideas. Here, the white of the “windy Cambridge courts” contrasts with the “vaulted roof so white and light and strong.”

Betjeman imagines the tombs that fill churches throughout East Anglia, with the effigies of the deceased captured for eternity in postures of prayer:

... the clasped hands lying long
Recumbent on sepulchral slabs or effigied in brass.

The prayers of these dead are a “buttress” for the vaulted ceiling of the chapel at King’s, which, built near the end of the Gothic period, needs no architectural buttresses. Christianity exists not because of aesthetics but because of prayer, and the sanctuary is supported, not because of the marvels of 15th century engineering, but by a tradition of faith. In ‘Sunday Morning, King’s Cambridge,’ the moment of worship exists out of time as the living and the dead, the choir and the poet, join in the eternal praise of God.

The poem has no irony, except perhaps in the last line:

To praise Eternity contained in Time and coloured glass.

Here Betjeman illustrates the futility of our human desire to share in God’s timelessness. All of us are being confounded by our foolish need to control God and time.

A final poem: Loneliness

‘The last year’s leaves are on the beech ... The Easter bells enlarge the sky,’ John Betjeman (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The chilling poem ‘Loneliness’ is included in Betjeman’s 1974 collection, A Nip in the Air. While it speaks of how “The Easter bells enlarge the sky,” it shows Betjeman’s deep fear of death. He suffered nightmares about Hell because he was married to one woman (Penelope Chetwode) but was living with another (Lady Elizabeth Cavendish).

The last year’s leaves are on the beech:
The twigs are black; the cold is dry;
To deeps beyond the deepest reach
The Easter bells enlarge the sky.
O ordered metal clatter-clang!
Is yours the song the angels sang?
You fill my heart with joy and grief –
Belief! Belief! And unbelief...
And, though you tell me I shall die,
You say not how or when or why.

However, the poet Hugo Williams hears Betjeman speaking frankly to God: “If he has a well-developed sense of his mortality it is no more than any poet needs to make poetry out of.” Betjeman’s religious values come through in his poems, and he affirms his belief even while fearing it might be false.

Betjeman celebrates the social and cultural significance of the Church of England, yet he points to the social and spiritual failures of the Church, particularly the snobbery and hypocrisy of the clergy and churchgoers. In his poems, he describes the perils of faith and the struggle to believe. He was a troublesome poet who persisted in believing, and in his poetry he explored his thoughts about his Anglican faith, about Englishness and about Christianity in general.

Poems by John Betjeman © John Betjeman Society.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, an Adjunct Assistant Professor, Trinity College Dublin, and a Canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

This essay and these photographs are published in Koinonia (Kansas City, MO), Vol 7, Issue 25 (Lent/Easter 2014), pp 12-18.

A traditional Good Friday in a resort on the Costa del Sol

The Good Friday procession stands on the shoreline in La Carihuela (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Patrick Comerford

I am spending the Easter weekend in Spain, experiencing the Spanish traditions of the Easter celebrations. While I am here, I am staying in the Roc Lago Rojo Hotel in La Carihuela, once a picturesque fishing village on the edges of Torremolinos, outside Málaga.

The hotel is a traditional beachfront hotel, only 50 metres from the sandy beach of La Carihuela, which is almost 2 km long and stretches as far as the Benalmádena Leisure Port.

Torremolinos was a Spanish fishing village until the 1950s, when it began to develop as one the first resorts on the Costa del Sol. La Carihuela was once a traditional fishing village but only a few nooks and crannies from the old quarter remain as reminders of the area’s former identity. Today it is a popular resort with all the shops, bars, restaurants and amenities found in any popular Mediterranean resort.

On the evening Maundy Thursday [17 April 2014], two of us attended the Eucharist in the local Roman Catholic parish church, a Carmelite church dedicated to Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

We were back in the church on the morning of Good Friday [18 April 2014], we were back in the church to follow the stations of the cross through La Carihuela, as local people carried a large, life-size cross with an image of the Crucified Christ through the streets of the resort.

It was interesting that in this overwhelmingly Catholic part of Spain, women played as much a part as men in carrying the Cross through the streets, bearing the large candle sticks and carrying the incense in the procession.

We stopped at different junctions, landmark bars and restaurants, and walked along the seaside promenade, as shopkeepers stood reverently in their doorways, and tourists watched from tables outside the cafés or as they made their way along the seafront.

At one stage, the procession made its way down onto the beach, where the procession leaders, with candles and a purple-covered cross, stopped at the edge of the water, procession and titled up the Cross with the image of the Crucified Christ.

It was an opportunity to proclaim Christ Crucified, and to bring the sacred into the secular, to make the secular sacred, an opportunity that is missed so often in many northern European societies.

Later in the afternoon, we caught the local train into Málaga, 15 km to the north, where we visited:

● the Cathedral – known as La Manquita (“the one-armed”) because one of its two towers has never been completed;

● the Roman Amphitheatre;

● the vast Alcazaba, built on the site of a Roman fortress in the 8th-11th centuries as part of the city’s ramparts and defences when Málaga was the principal port of the Moorish Kingdom of Granada.

● the Church of Santiago, where Picasso was baptised and where the local Russian Orthodox community were guests, marking Good Friday too, with an Orthodox epitaphios in front of the altar;

● Picasso’s birthplace, now a museum and home to the Fundación Picasso.

Spanish ladies in lace queuing outside a restaurant in Málaga on Good Friday (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Through the streets of Málaga they were taking down the chairs and viewing platforms that had been in place for the procession of the statues on Thursday evening. In the cathedral and the churches, many Spanish people were dressed formally as they came to pray quietly.

But even the women who dress in formal black, with large, traditional lace headdresses are “Ladies who Lunch” and queued without any hint of self-consciousness outside the restaurants for lunch.

We were back in La Carihuela in time for the Good Friday Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Eucharist in the small church around the corner from the hotel.

Art for Lent (46): ‘The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb’ (1521), by Hans Holbein the Younger

Hans Holbein the Younger (ca 1497-1543), The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb (ca 1521), Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel

Patrick Comerford

We have come to the end of Lent and Holy Saturday or Easter Eve (19 April 2014) (Holy Saturday). The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary are: Job 14: 1-14; Psalm 31: 1-4, 15-16; I Peter 4: 1-8; and Matthew 27: 57-66.

The Gospel reading tells the story of the burial of Christ:

Matthew 27: 57-66

57 When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. 58 He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. 59 So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth 60 and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. 61 Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.

62 The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate 63 and said, ‘Sir, we remember what that impostor said while he was still alive, “After three days I will rise again.” 64 Therefore command that the tomb be made secure until the third day; otherwise his disciples may go and steal him away, and tell the people, “He has been raised from the dead”, and the last deception would be worse than the first.’ 65 Pilate said to them, ‘You have a guard* of soldiers; go, make it as secure as you can.’ 66 So they went with the guard and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone.

The artist and the painting

Mychoice of a work of Art for Lent this morning is ‘The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb’, painted by Hans Holbein the Younger in 1521. This painting can be seen in the Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel. The painting is in oil and tempera on lime-wood, and is noteworthy for its dramatic dimensions (30.5 cm x 200 cm).

The German painter, Hans Holbein the Younger (ca 1497-1543), is best known for his portraits of Erasmus, Thomas More, Henry VIII and ‘The Ambassadors,’ in which the cross is placed at the edge of the world.

He lived through the Reformation in Germany, Switzerland and England, and although he was relatively young when death came at the age of 49, his work is an important contribution to the beginning of modern art, with an almost photographic realism in his figures, in his perspective and in his use of colour.

His starkest and most gripping work is ‘The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb,’ as we think of Christ’s body laying in the tomb on this day, the day between his Crucifixion on Good Friday and his Resurrection on Easter Day.

Holbein the Younger was trained as a painter by his father, the German painter Hans Holbein the Elder (ca 1460-1524). At an early stage, Hans Holbein the Elder took his son to see Matthias Grünewald’s altar-piece in Isenheim, where Holbein the elder worked on a number of commissions.

By 1520, Hans Holbein the Younger was living in the Swiss city of Basel, at a time when the Lutheran Reformation was about to make a major impact on the life of the city.

Like many artists of the early Reformation period, he was fascinated with the macabre, and in common with the religious traditions of the 1520s, this work, ‘The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb,’ was intended to evoke piety.

Andrea Mantegna, ‘The Dead Christ’ (1490)

Critics point out that this painting follows closely the intentions of Grünewald, who in his altar-piece in Isenheim set out to instil in the viewer feelings of both guilt and empathy. But Holbein may also have been influenced by Andrea Mantegna’s ‘The Dead Christ’ (1490).

A 14th century Epitaphios in the Byzantine Museum in Thessaloniki

I am inclined to believe too that the iconographic origins of this morning’s painting may be traced to Byzantine works, for in many ways Holbein has adapted to western styles the Orthodox iconography of the Epitaphios, the bier of Christ.

This painting, now on display in the Öffentliche Kunstsammlung in Basel in Switzerland, was painted by Holbein around 1521. It is said that Holbein used a body fished out of the Rhine as a model for this work. But we do not know his reasons for painting this work. Was it a predella for an altarpiece? Was it intended as a free-standing work? Was it made to fit in a sepulchral niche? We may wonder. But it is more wonderful to meditate on this work, and to think of what the artist was trying to get us to think about.

Above Hans Holbein’s ‘The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb’ angels bear a Latin inscription

Above the body, angels holding instruments of the Passion bear an inscription in brush on paper inscribed with the Latin words in capital letters: “Iesvs Nazarenvs. Rex. Iudaeorum” (“Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”). But the rest of the work is entirely naturalistic, relieved of any sacred symbols, and with no pointers to suggest the transcendent meaning of the event.

In the work itself, Holbein shows the dead Son of God after he has suffered the fate of an ordinary human. We have here a life-size, grotesque depiction of the stretched and unnaturally thin, decomposing body of Christ, lying in his tomb.

The French philosopher and atheist Michel Onfray admits that “entering this work is like entering a coffin to see what’s happening inside.”

Christ’s rigid limbs and his flesh, green and swollen around the wounds, indicate the start of the corruption of his body. His body is shown as long and emaciated. His face, hands and feet, as well as the wounds in his torso, are depicted as realistic dead flesh in the early stages of purification.

At first, all we see in a dead body, a corpse – motionless, as if so for all eternity. The bones of his body push against the flesh like spikes emphasising the hollowness of his ribcage. String-like muscles press against the lifeless yellow skin.

But look carefully at the face of Christ which is slightly tilted towards us. Onfray points to how his mouth and his eyes are stretched open. You might just be able to hear, at least in a virtual sense, the final breath. You might guess the presence of the Holy Spirit.

We see Christ seeing. We see what death has in store. He is staring at the heavens, while his soul is probably there already. “No-one has taken the trouble to close his mouth, or to close his eyes,” Onfray notices. “Or perhaps Holbein wants to tell us that, even in death, Christ still looks and speaks.

There are three signs that indicate that this body is body of the crucified Son of God: the wounds in his side, on his hand and on his foot.

There are no wounds on his forehead, no traces of the crown of thorns. Holbein paints the right side of Christ. His left side, the sinistra, is in the shadow of the tomb, in the shadow of death.

His hair spills over the stone block which has been covered with a white shroud. Oskar Batschmann and Pascal Griener suggest the strands of hair “look as if they are breaking through the surface of the painting.” His beard points up towards the low roof of this wooden, box-like tomb.

Christ’s right hand balances on the edge of the dishevelled shroud. Notice how the sign made by this hand is at the exact point that divides this work into two parts – right and left. All his fingers, apart from his middle finger, are curled inward, and we can almost feel the pain the dying Christ felt as his life ebbed away.

Detail from Hans Holbein’s ‘The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb’ ... is Christ’s middle finger pointing at the beholder, or pointing at his shroud?

Remarking on Holbein’s use of unflinching realism, Batschmann and Griener note that Christ’s raised, extended middle finger appears to “reach towards the beholder.”

Yes, the middle finger is outstretched, and the other fingers folded back into the palm. But could this be mistaken for a vulgar gesture?

Within traditional allegorical configuration, each finger has meaning. The hand represents the soul, the principle of life, while the fingers are used for spiritual exercises: the thumb, to give thanks; the index finger, to strive to reach the light; the ring finger, for suffering and regret, the little finger, to offer, to propose, to show, to present; and the middle finger, to examine, to weigh, a lesson in edification.

The extended middle finger in Holbein’s painting, at the epicentre of this work, is saying to us: “Look and conclude: examine.”

Examine what?

The middle finger acts as the punctum of the painting, the very tip, the flesh of the finger, marked by the nail like invisible writing.

It is the finger of Christ writing in the sand when he confronts those who would stone a woman taken in adultery; it is the finger of William Blake’s Ancient of Days pointing to the mystery of creation; it is the Finger of God pointing to humanity in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel.

This is this painting’s lesson. And for Onfray, Christ’s finger is pointing to his shroud, saying: “See this shroud, it is the sign of the death of death if, and only if, you live as a penitent Christian, imitate the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

For five centuries, the painting has fascinated and captivated. The Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky was totally overwhelmed on first seeing it in 1867, so much so that his wife had to drag him away, fearing its grip on her husband might induce an epileptic fit. She wrote that he could never forget the sensation he experienced gazing at the painting, which continued to haunt him.

Two years later, Dostoevsky wrote The Idiot (1869), in which he refers to this painting many times. He thought it posed a terrible threat to faith in Christ, and Prince Myshkin, having viewed the painting in the home of Rogozhin, declares that it has the power to make the viewer lose his faith.

Yet, the Cambridge-educated writer and popular historian Derek Wilson, who has written a biography of Holbein and more recently a study of the King James Vrersion of the Bible to mark its four-hundredth anniversary in 2011, says: “No other picture expresses more eloquently the faith of the Reformation, the Christocentric faith of many humanists, the faith of those for whom the Bible has become a living book.”

At the end of East Coker, the second of his Four Quartets, TS Eliot says:

Home is where one starts from …
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter ...
…
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
… In my end is the beginning.

As I look at this painting of Christ I am reminded too of Eliot’s words at the end of Little Gidding, the last of his Four Quartets:

What call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from ...
...
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
...
And all shall we well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are infolded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

The shroud has been folded for the past twenty centuries, but this fabric still speaks today. Even in death, Christ still speaks today. Contrary to the impression this painting made on Dostoevsky, this work is far from the product of an atheistic mind. Rather, it is intended to convey the message of belief, that from the decay of the tomb Christ rose in glory on the third day.

The climax of Holy Week is Good Friday. But the climax of Lent is reached tomorrow (Easter Day) with the Resurrection.

Collect

Grant, Lord,
that we who are baptized into the death
of your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ
may continually put to death our evil desires
and be buried with him;
and that through the grave and gate of death
we may pass to our joyful resurrection;
through his merits, who died and was buried
and rose again for us,
your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

Series Concluded

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and an Adjunct Assistant Professesor, Trinity College, Dublin.

United in suffering

This full-length editorial is published on the leader page (p. 17) of The Irish Times today, Good Friday, 18 April 2014::

United in
suffering

When Pope Francis canonises two of his predecessors, Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II, on Sunday week, raising them to the ranks of sainthood, it is inevitable that comparisons will be drawn between the present pope and his predecessors. On Good Friday, it is worth remembering how Pope John XXIII removed offensive references to Jews in the liturgy for Good Friday. His decision paved the way for a visit to the Holy Land by his successor, Pope Paul VI, and laid the foundations for vastly improved Jewish-Catholic relations.

Jewish-Christian relations will be to the fore again when Pope Francis visits the Middle East next month. This visit, marks the 50th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s visit in 1964, and includes a meeting with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

But Pope Francis must be acutely aware that while he is free next month to visit Bethlehem, Jerusalem and other key sites associated with the Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection, Christians in the Middle East are suffering increasingly as they are caught between state-sanctioned discriminations in Israel and violence and bloodshed in other parts of the Middle East. When Pope Paul VI visited the Middle East in 1964, Christians accounted for about 20 per cent of the total population of the region; half a century later, it is calculated, they are just three per cent of the population.

Divisions between churches

In many parts of the world, political conflicts are reflected in the divisions between the Churches. In Ukraine, for example, the divisions between the Churches and within the Churches reflect centuries of conflict – even the Orthodox Church has fractured into factions that look towards Moscow or look towards the nationalists in Kiev. In recent days, two prominent Russian-speaking Orthodox priests have fled Ukraine after questioning by the Ukrainian Security Service, while properties belonging to Ukraine’s independent Orthodox Church have been seized by Russian Orthodox groups in Crimea. A Ukrainian Catholic leader, Bishop Bohdan Dzyurakh, fears Catholics could lose their legal status in Crimea under Russian rule, and some of his priests say they have been branded “Vatican agents” and warned to leave Crimea.

Yet, unlike Ukraine, Christians in the Middle East are united in their sufferings. This year is one of those rare occasions when the calendars of the Western and Eastern Churches coincide so that Good Friday and Easter fall on the same days for the Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant traditions. And Palestinian Christians have been united this week in speaking out against Israeli restrictions imposed on them all, severely restricting their access to many of the holy sites this weekend.

In a collective statement this week, the Christian community in Jerusalem claimed the mobility of worshippers inside the Old City is being heavily restricted by checkpoints and gates, preventing Christians from free access to sites that include the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Via Dolorosa. Monasteries in the West Bank are frequently the targets of arsonists and vandals. Deir Rafat Monastery, west of Jerusalem, was recently petrol bombed and its walls daubed with racist graffiti.

A Christian exodus

In neighbouring states too, Christians are suffering. A Jesuit priest in Syria, Father Frans van der Lugt, was abducted from a monastery in Qoms and murdered earlier this month. Syrian rebels have razed the Christian town of Maaloula, where Christians lived for almost 2,000 years and spoke Aramaic, the language spoken by Christ himself. Although 12 nuns were released by their kidnappers last month, there is still no news of two archbishops abducted in Aleppo 12 months ago. In all, 1,200 Christians have been killed in Syria, 30 per cent of churches have been destroyed and 600,000 Christians have fled the country.

The Chaldean Patriarch, Mar Louis Sako Raphael I, who leads a Church in Iraq that is in communion with the Pope, has declared: “1,400 years of Islam have not been able to take us away from our lands and our churches; now Western policy has dispersed us to the four corners of the earth.” About half of all Iraqi Christians, once numbering 1.5 million, have left Iraq in fear of violence and persecution.

The exodus of Christians from the Middle East appears unstoppable. At a meeting before Christmas with the Patriarchs of the Eastern Churches, Pope Francis said he could “never accept a Middle East without Christians.” Christians in Jerusalem carried a bold message in the Palm Sunday procession from the Mount of Olives to the Old City last Sunday, with banners that called out: “Pope Francis: Palestine Wants Justice.” The Pope will need to reiterate his fears forcibly when he meets Israeli and Palestinian leaders next month in a torn and suffering place where Christ was crucified and that was once called the Holy Land.

Art for Lent (45): ‘Christ of Saint John of the Cross’ (1951), by Salvador Dalí

‘Christ of Saint John of the Cross’ (1951), by Salvador Dalí

Patrick Comerford

Today, on Good Friday [18 April 2014], we have the climax of Holy Week, the readings in the Revised Common Lectionary for today are: Isaiah 52: 13 to 54: 12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 10: 16-25 or 4: 14-16, 5: 7-9; and John 18: 1 to 19: 42.

John 18: 1 to 19: 42

1 After Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. 2 Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, because Jesus often met there with his disciples. 3 So Judas brought a detachment of soldiers together with police from the chief priests and the Pharisees, and they came there with lanterns and torches and weapons. 4 Then Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him, came forward and asked them, ‘For whom are you looking?’ 5 They answered, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ Jesus replied, ‘I am he.’ Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them. 6 When Jesus said to them, ‘I am he’, they stepped back and fell to the ground. 7 Again he asked them, ‘For whom are you looking?’ And they said, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ 8 Jesus answered, ‘I told you that I am he. So if you are looking for me, let these men go.’ 9 This was to fulfil the word that he had spoken, ‘I did not lose a single one of those whom you gave me.’ 10 Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it, struck the high priest’s slave, and cut off his right ear. The slave’s name was Malchus. 11 Jesus said to Peter, ‘Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?’

12 So the soldiers, their officer, and the Jewish police arrested Jesus and bound him. 13 First they took him to Annas, who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest that year. 14 Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jews that it was better to have one person die for the people.

15 Simon Peter and another disciple followed Jesus. Since that disciple was known to the high priest, he went with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest, 16 but Peter was standing outside at the gate. So the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out, spoke to the woman who guarded the gate, and brought Peter in. 17 The woman said to Peter, ‘You are not also one of this man’s disciples, are you?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ 18 Now the slaves and the police had made a charcoal fire because it was cold, and they were standing round it and warming themselves. Peter also was standing with them and warming himself.

19 Then the high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and about his teaching. 20 Jesus answered, ‘I have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews come together. I have said nothing in secret. 21 Why do you ask me? Ask those who heard what I said to them; they know what I said.’ 22 When he had said this, one of the police standing nearby struck Jesus on the face, saying, ‘Is that how you answer the high priest?’ 23 Jesus answered, ‘If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong. But if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?’ 24 Then Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest.

25 Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. They asked him, ‘You are not also one of his disciples, are you?’ He denied it and said, ‘I am not.’ 26 One of the slaves of the high priest, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, asked, ‘Did I not see you in the garden with him?’ 27 Again Peter denied it, and at that moment the cock crowed.

28 Then they took Jesus from Caiaphas to Pilate’s headquarters. It was early in the morning. They themselves did not enter the headquarters, so as to avoid ritual defilement and to be able to eat the Passover. 29 So Pilate went out to them and said, ‘What accusation do you bring against this man?’ 30 They answered, ‘If this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.’ 31 Pilate said to them, ‘Take him yourselves and judge him according to your law.’ The Jews replied, ‘We are not permitted to put anyone to death.’ 32 (This was to fulfil what Jesus had said when he indicated the kind of death he was to die.)

33 Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ 34 Jesus answered, ‘Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?’ 35 Pilate replied, ‘I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?’ 36 Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.’ 37 Pilate asked him, ‘So you are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’ 38 Pilate asked him, ‘What is truth?’

After he had said this, he went out to the Jews again and told them, ‘I find no case against him. 39 But you have a custom that I release someone for you at the Passover. Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?’ 40 They shouted in reply, ‘Not this man, but Barabbas!’ Now Barabbas was a bandit.

1 Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. 2 And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they dressed him in a purple robe. 3 They kept coming up to him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ and striking him on the face. 4 Pilate went out again and said to them, ‘Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no case against him.’ 5 So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, ‘Here is the man!’ 6 When the chief priests and the police saw him, they shouted, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ Pilate said to them, ‘Take him yourselves and crucify him; I find no case against him.’ 7 The Jews answered him, ‘We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the Son of God.’

8 Now when Pilate heard this, he was more afraid than ever. 9 He entered his headquarters again and asked Jesus, ‘Where are you from?’ But Jesus gave him no answer. 10 Pilate therefore said to him, ‘Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?’ 11 Jesus answered him, ‘You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above; therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.’ 12 From then on Pilate tried to release him, but the Jews cried out, ‘If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor.’

13 When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside and sat on the judge’s bench at a place called The Stone Pavement, or in Hebrew Gabbatha. 14 Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon. He said to the Jews, ‘Here is your King!’ 15 They cried out, ‘Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!’ Pilate asked them, ‘Shall I crucify your King?’ The chief priests answered, ‘We have no king but the emperor.’ 16 Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.

So they took Jesus; 17 and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. 18 There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them. 19 Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.’ 20 Many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. 21 Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, ‘Do not write, “The King of the Jews”, but, “This man said, I am King of the Jews”.’ 22 Pilate answered, ‘What I have written I have written.’ 23 When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four parts, one for each soldier. They also took his tunic; now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from the top. 24 So they said to one another, ‘Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see who will get it.’ This was to fulfil what the scripture says,

‘They divided my clothes among themselves,
and for my clothing they cast lots.’

25 And that is what the soldiers did.

Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ 27 Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

28 After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfil the scripture), ‘I am thirsty.’ 29 A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. 30 When Jesus had received the wine, he said, ‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

31 Since it was the day of Preparation, the Jews did not want the bodies left on the cross during the sabbath, especially because that sabbath was a day of great solemnity. So they asked Pilate to have the legs of the crucified men broken and the bodies removed. 32 Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him. 33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34 Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out. 35 (He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth.) 36 These things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled, ‘None of his bones shall be broken.’ 37 And again another passage of scripture says, ‘They will look on the one whom they have pierced.’

38 After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. 39 Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. 40 They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. 41 Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. 42 And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

The artist and the painting

My choice of a work of Art for Lent this Good Friday morning is ‘Christ of Saint John of the Cross,’ painted by Salvador Dali in 1951. This painting is in oil on canvas, measures 205 cm × 116 cm and can be seen in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow.

This painting by Salvador Dalí depicts Christ 0n the cross in a darkened sky floating over a body of water complete with a boat and fishermen. Although Dalí depicts the crucifixion, this painting shows no nails, no blood, and no crown of thorns. Dalí once said he was convinced in a dream that these features would mar his depiction of Christ, and in that dream he was shown the importance of depicting Christ in the extreme angle we see in this painting.

The painting is known as the ‘Christ of Saint John of the Cross’ because Dalí based his design on a drawing by the 16th century Spanish Carmelite friar and mystic Saint John of the Cross.

The composition of Christ is also based on a triangle and circle: the triangle is formed by Christ’s arms; the circle is formed by his head. The triangle refers to the Trinity. While the circle represents, in Dalí’s own words, “the very unity of the universe, the Christ!”

It is different from any other image of the crucifixion. The angle of the view describes the hanging pain of this method of execution, but hides the ordinarily clichéd facial expressions normally seen on representations of the Crucifixion.

In 2009, the Guardian art critic, Jonathan Jones, described it as “kitsch and lurid,” but said this painting is “for better or worse, probably the most enduring vision of the crucifixion painted in the 20th century.”

The painting was bought for Glasgow Corporation in the early 1950s for £8,200, and went on display at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in 1952. In 1961, a visitor attacked the painting with a stone and tore the canvas with his hands. It was successfully restored over several months. In 2006, it was selected in a poll as Scotland’s favourite painting.

Collect:

Almighty Father,
Look with mercy on this your family
for which our Lord Jesus Christ
was content to be betrayed
and given up into the hands of sinners
and to suffer death upon the cross;
who is alive and glorified with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Tomorrow: ‘The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb’ (1521), by Hans Holbein the Younger.

Cabaret ‘every Thursday night’ and singing ‘Torremolinos, Torremolinos’

Patrick Comerford

Do you recall this monologue?:

“Yes, I quite agree with you, I mean, what’s the point of being treated like a sheep? I mean, I’m fed up going abroad and being treated like sheep. What’s the point of being carted around in buses, surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Boventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the tea, ‘Oh, they don’t make it properly here, do they, not like at home,’ stopping at Majorcan bodegas, selling fish and chips and Watney’s Red Barrel and calamares and two veg and sitting in cotton sun frocks squirting Timothy White’s suncream all over their puffy, raw, swollen, purulent flesh ‘cause they ‘overdid it on the first day,’ and being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellvueses and Bontinentals with their international luxury modern roomettes and their Watney’s Red Barrel and their swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending to be acrobats and forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging into the queues and, if you’re not at your table, spot on seven you miss your bowl of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of International Cuisine, and every Thursday night there’s bloody cabaret in the bar featuring some tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and some big, fat, bloated tart with her hair Brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners, and then some adenoidal typists from Birmingham with diarrhoea and flabby white legs and hairy bandy-legged wop waiters called Manuel, and then, once a week, there’s an excursion to the local Roman ruins where you can buy cherryade and melted ice cream and bleedin’ Watney’s Red Barrel, and then one night they take you to a local restaurant with local colour and colouring and they show you there and you sit next to a party of people from Rhyl who keeps singing ‘Torremolinos, Torremolinos’ and complaining about the food, ‘Oh, it’s so greasy, isn’t it?’, and then you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with an Instamatic and Dr Scholl sandals and Tuesday’s Daily Express and he drones on and on and on about how Mr Smith should be running this country and how many languages Enoch Powell can speak and then he throws up all over the Cuba Libres, and sending tinted postcards of places they don’t know they haven’t visited, ‘To all at number 22, weather wonderful, our room is marked with an ‘X’. Wish you were here. Food very greasy but we have managed to find this marvellous little place hidden away in the back streets where you can even get Watney’s Red Barrel and cheese and onion crisps and the accordionist plays “Maybe It’s Because I’m a Londoner”,’ and spending four days on the tarmac at Luton airport on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat but dried Watney’s sandwiches and you can’t even get a drink of Watney’s Red Barrel because you’re still in England and the bloody bar closes every time you’re thirsty and there’s nowhere to sleep and the kids are crying and vomiting and breaking the plastic ash-trays and they keep telling you it’ll only be another hour although your plane is still in Iceland and has to take some Swedes to Yugoslavia before it can load you up at 3 a.m. in the bloody morning and you sit on the tarmac till six because of ‘unforeseen difficulties,’ i.e. the permanent strike of Air Traffic Control in Paris – and nobody can go to the lavatory until you take off at 8, and when you get to Malaga airport everybody’s swallowing “enterovioform” and queuing for the toilets and queuing for the armed customs officers, and queuing for the bloody bus that isn’t there to take you to the hotel that hasn’t yet been finished. And when you finally get to the half-built Algerian ruin called the Hotel del Sol by paying half your holiday money to a licensed bandit in a taxi you find there’s no water in the pool, there’s no water in the taps, there’s no water in the bog and there’s only a bleeding lizard in the bidet. And half the rooms are double booked and you can’t sleep anyway because of the permanent 24-hour drilling of the foundations of the hotel next door – and you’re plagued by appalling apprentice chemists from Ealing pretending to be hippies, and middle-class stockbrokers’ wives busily buying identical holiday villas in suburban development plots just like Esher, in case the Labour government gets in again, and fat American matrons with sloppy-buttocks and Hawaiian-patterned ski pants looking for any mulatto male who can keep it up long enough when they finally let it all flop out. And the Spanish Tourist Board promises you that the raging cholera epidemic is merely a case of mild Spanish tummy, like the previous outbreak of Spanish tummy in 1660 which killed half London and decimated Europe, and meanwhile the bloody Guardia are busy arresting 16-year-olds for kissing in the streets and shooting anyone under 19 who doesn’t like Franco. And then on the last day in the airport lounge everyone’s comparing sunburns, drinking Nasty Spumante, buying cartons of duty free ‘cigarillos’ and using up their last pesetas on horrid dolls in Spanish National costume and awful straw donkeys and bullfight posters with your name on ‘Ordoney, El Cordobes and Brian Pules of Norwich’ and 3-D pictures of the Pope and Kennedy and Franco, and everybody’s talking about coming again next year and you swear you never will although there you are tumbling bleary-eyed out of a tourist-tight antique Iberian airplane.”

Well, that’s a Monty Python mouthful. If you remember this sketch from 1972, you’re the same generation as I am.

I know it’s no longer politically correct, but it remains a classic of British television comedy after so many years. It’s up there with the Ministry of Silly Walks and the Dead Parrot.

And, well, I’m in Torremlinos this week, nor for the Watney’s Red Barrel, last Tuesday’s Daily Express, or cabaret ‘every Thursday night,’ but to experience the climax of Lent, Semana Santa (Holy Week), which began on Palm Sunday (13 April 2014) and continues until Easter Day (20 April).

During this week, the streets of cities, town and resorts in this part of Spain, including Seville and Malaga, are filled with thousands of mediaeval robed and hooded figures, processing slowly behind swaying life-sized religious effigies, accompanied by the deep thud of drums and mournful wailing of trumpets in one of Spain’s largest festivals.

These ancient, sombre commemorations of Christ’s last days are marked by pageantry and emotion that reveal a mystical side of life in Spain, even in vibrant and cosmopolitan cities and resorts, especially at dusk, when candles are lit, and the processions take on a haunting, timeless feel.

Up to a million visitors flock to Seville alone for the spectacle; and the late-night processions this evening (17 April), known as las Madrugas, are said to be unmissable.

The cofradias or church brotherhoods, many dating from the 16th century, take part, each with its own statues of the Virgin Mary and Christ, as well as colourful misterios or tableaux of Bible scenes, carried about on elaborately-decorated pasos or floats.

The nazarenos or robed and hooded penitents carrying crosses, wear hoods, tunics and belts in the special colours of their cofradia. The capirotes or tall, pointed hoods with eye-holes, are designed so those who wear them can repent in anonymity, without being recognised as self-confessed sinners.

Maundy Thursday and Good Friday are national holidays in Spain.

In Seville, the climax of this week is reached early tomorrow morning on Good Friday (18 April), with the appearance of the city’s two favourite and rival Virgin Marys, Triana and Macarena.

In Malaga, Semana Santa is also a very special affair, with the brotherhoods of the city sending floats and large thrones out onto the streets, and candle-lit processions that followed by thousands of spectators.

There are even traditional Semana Santa pastries and nazareno-shaped sweets and chocolates.

This is my first time in Spain, apart from a brief city break in Madrid five years ago in May 2009. So there is a lot to look forward to over the next few days.

Art for Lent (44): ‘The Last Supper’ (1592-1594), by Jacopo Tintoretto

‘The Last Supper’ (1592-1594), by Jacopo Tintoretto

Patrick Comerford

Today, on Maundy Thursday [17 April 2014], we are coming to the climax of Holy Week, and Lent is almost over.

The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary for today are: Exodus 12: 1-4, (5-10,) 11-14; Psalm 116: 1, 10-17; I Corinthians 11: 23-26; and John 13: 1-17, 31b-35.

Today’s Gospel reading provides the Johannine narrative of the Last Supper, including Christ’s prediction of his betrayal by Judas, Christ’s washing of the disciples’ feet, and the great command to love one another. Notice how it does not provide an institution narrative, and instead in today’s readings we find that in the Epistle reading (I Corinthians 11: 23-26).

John 13: 1-17, 31b-35

1 Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2 The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper 3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, 4 got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. 5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. 6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, ‘Lord, are you going to wash my feet?’ 7Jesus answered, ‘You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.’ 8 Peter said to him, ‘You will never wash my feet.’ Jesus answered, ‘Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.’ 9 Simon Peter said to him, ‘Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!’ 10 Jesus said to him, ‘One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.’ 11For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, ‘Not all of you are clean.’

12 After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you? 13 You call me Teacher and Lord – and you are right, for that is what I am. 14 So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15 For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. 16 Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. 17 If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.

31 When he had gone out, Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. 32 If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.33 Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, “Where I am going, you cannot come.” 34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’

The painting and the artist

My choice of a work of Art for Lent this morning [17 April 2014] is ‘The Last Supper’ by the Italian Renaissance artist Jacopo Tintoretto. This is an oil painting on canvas and measures 365 cm × 568 cm. It dates from 1592-1594, and is in the Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice.

The Last Supper is a popular subject throughout the history of Christian art, and some of the earliest depictions can be seen in frescoes in the Catacombs in Rome, where Christ and the disciples are depicted reclining around semi-circular tables.

The three major themes depicted in paintings of the Last Supper: the washing of the disciples’ feet by Christ, the betrayal by Judas, and the Eucharist meal.

Byzantine artists sometimes used semi-circular tables in their depictions, but more frequently they focused on the Communion of the Apostles, rather than the reclining figures having a meal.

By the Renaissance, the Last Supper was a favourite subject in Italian art, especially in monastic refectories. These paintings often show the reactions of the disciples to the announcement of the betrayal of Christ.

Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’ (1498) is considered the first work of High Renaissance art. He balances the varying emotions of the individual apostles when Christ states that one of the 12 would betray him. He shows a variety of attitudes from anger and surprise to shock.

Most of the Italian paintings present an oblong table rather that a semi-circular one, and sometimes Judas is shown by himself clutching his money bag. With an oblong table, the artist had to decide whether to show the apostles on both sides, so that some of the 12 are seen from behind, or all on one side of the table facing the viewer.

Sometimes only Judas is on the side nearest the viewer, allowing his bag of money to be seen.

Placing the Disciples on both sides is further complicated when haloes are needed, so that some haloes are placed either in front of the faces of other apostles, or obscure the view. Duccio was the first artist to omit haloes, albeit the haloes of those apostles nearest the viewer. Giotto, in his fresco in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (1305), uses flat haloes, but the view from behind causes difficulties, and Saint John’s halo has to be reduced in size.

As artists became more interested in realism and the depiction of space, a three-sided interior setting became clearer and more elaborate, sometimes with a landscape view behind, as in the wall-paintings by Leonardo da Vinci and Perugino.

Some of the apostles are identifiable in some works; Judas often has his bag with 30 pieces of silver visible; Saint John the Evangelist is normally placed on Christy’s right side, usually “reclining in Jesus’ bosom” as his Gospel says, or even asleep; Saint Peter is generally on Christ’s left.

The food on the table often includes a paschal lamb. In Byzantine versions, fish is the main dish. In later works, the bread may look more like a Communion host. Later still, we see more food, eating, and even waiters and servers, including women.

The Last Supper was one of the few subjects that continued in Lutheran altarpieces after the Reformation, sometimes portraying leading Reformers as the apostles. For example, the painting by Lucas Cranach the Younger (1565) portrays leading Reformers as the Apostles, and also show the Elector of Saxony kneeling.

In the 20th century, Salvador Dalí’s depiction combines the typical Christian themes with modern approaches of Surrealism and also includes geometric elements of symmetry and polygonal proportion.

Looking at the scenes

In some paintings, Judas may only be identifiable because he is stretching out his hand for the food, as the other apostles sit with their hands out of sight, or because he has no halo. In the West, he often has red hair. Sometimes Judas takes the sop in his mouth directly from Christ’s hand, and when he is shown eating it a small devil may be shown next to or on it.

Domenico Ghirlandaio, in his ‘Last Supper’ (1480), depicts Judas separately. The painting in Old Saint Peter’s Church, Strasbourg, dating from1485, shows Saint John leaning across, and Judas in yellow carries his 30 pieces of silver in a bag. Pietro Perugino’s paining in Florence (ca 1493-1496), which is regarded as one of his best pieces, also shows Judas sitting separately.

The betrayal scene may also be combined with the other episodes of the meal, sometimes with a second figure of Christ washing Peter’s feet. The ‘Last Supper’ by Rubens (1630/1631) introduces a dog near Judas, perhaps representing Satan (see John 13: 27).

The depictions of the Eucharist meal are generally solemn and mystical. They may show either Christ while he speaks the dominical words or words of institution over the bread and wine, with all still seated, or show the disciples moving forward to receive from Christ, with Christ standing and delivering the bread and wine of the Communion to each apostle, like a priest giving the sacrament of Holy Communion.

In ‘Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles’ by Meister des Hausbuches (1475), only Judas lacks a halo.

Tintoretto and ‘The Last Supper’

Tintoretto’s ‘Last Supper’ (1590-1592) in the Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, depicts the announcement of the betrayal, and includes an array of additional people carrying in food or taking out dishes from the table.

Tintoretto painted the Last Supper several times during his career. His earlier paintings for the Chiesa di San Marcuola (1547) and for the Chiesa di San Felice (1559) from the scene from a frontal perspective, following a convention observed in most paintings at the time, including Leonardo da Vinci’s mural in Milan.

This scene by Tintoretto, painted in his final years, departs drastically from this style of composition. The setting is similar to a Venetian inn, in which the centre is occupied not by the apostles but by secondary characters, including a woman carrying a dish and servants taking the dishes from the table.

This is a complex and radically asymmetrical composition. The apostles sit at table that recedes into space on a steep diagonal. His use of light is also worth noting – see how it appears to come from the light on the ceiling and from Christ’s aureola.

Jacopo Comin, or Tintoretto (“little dyer”), was also called Il Furioso because of his phenomenal energy in painting. His work is characterised by its muscular figures, dramatic gestures, and his bold use of perspective, while maintaining colour and light.

He was born in Venice in September or October 1518, the eldest of 21 children. As a child, he began daubing on his father’s dyer’s walls. His father took him to the studio of Titian to see whether he could be trained as an artist. Titian is said to have been jealous of his talent and sent him home.

Tintoretto then studied on his own, and placed an inscription over his studio: “Il disegno di Michelangelo ed il colorito di Tiziano” (“Michelangelo’s design and Titian’s colour”).

His two earliest mural paintings are probably ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’ and a Cavalry Fight, which have since been lost, along with all his frescoes, early or later. Three of his early surviving paintings are the ‘Presentation of Jesus in the Temple,’ now in the Church of the Carmine in Venice, and the ‘Annunciation’ and ‘Christ with the Woman of Samaria,’ in San Benedetto.

The crowning production of Tintoretto’s life is the vast ‘Paradise,’ measuring 22.6 x 9.1 metres, and said to be the largest painting ever on canvas, and commissioned in 1588. After its completion, he never undertook another work of importance. He died on 31 May 1594, and is buried in the church of the Madonna dell’Orto.

Collect:

God our Father,
you have invited us to share in the supper
which your Son gave to his Church
to proclaim his death until he comes:
May he nourish us by his presence,
and unite us in his love;
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

and/or:

Almighty God,
at the Last Supper your Son Jesus Christ
washed the disciples’ feet
and commanded them to love one another.
Give us humility and obedience to be servants of others
as he was the servant of all;
who gave up his life and died for us,
yet is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ,
in this wonderful sacrament
you have given us a memorial of your passion.
Grant us so to reverence the sacred mysteries
of your body and blood
that we may know within ourselves
the fruits of your redemption,
for you are alive and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

and/or

O God,
your Son Jesus Christ has left us this meal of bread and wine
in which we share his body and his blood.
May we who celebrate this sign of his great love
show in our lives the fruits of his redemption;
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Tomorrow: ‘Christ of Saint John of the Cross’ (1951), by Salvador Dalí.

Art for Lent (43): ‘The Taking of Christ’ (1602) by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

‘The Taking of Christ’ (1602), by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

Patrick Comerford

The Revised Common Lectionary as used in the Church of Ireland provides readings, collects and post-communion prayers for each of the days in Holy Week. The readings for today, Wednesday in Holy Week [16 April 2014], are: Isaiah 50: 4-9a; Psalm 70; Hebrews 12: 1-3; and John 13: 21-32.

My choice of a work of Art for Lent this morning.

In this Gospel reading, Christ talks about his imminent betrayal by Judas. Perhaps the best known painting illustrating the betrayal of Christ by Judas is ‘The Taking of Christ’ (1602) by Caravaggio, which is on display in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, and which is my choice of a work of Art for Lent this morning [16 April 2014].

John 13: 21-32

21 After saying this Jesus was troubled in spirit, and declared, ‘Very truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me.’ 22 The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he was speaking. 23 One of his disciples—the one whom Jesus loved—was reclining next to him; 24 Simon Peter therefore motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. 25 So while reclining next to Jesus, he asked him, ‘Lord, who is it?’ 26 Jesus answered, ‘It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.’ So when he had dipped the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas son of Simon Iscariot. 27After he received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, ‘Do quickly what you are going to do.’ 28 Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. 29 Some thought that, because Judas had the common purse, Jesus was telling him, ‘Buy what we need for the festival’; or, that he should give something to the poor. 30 So, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night.

31 When he had gone out, Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. 32 If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.

The artist and his painting

‘The Taking of Christ,’ painted in 1602 by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1573-1610), is on display in the National Gallery of Ireland in Merrion Square, Dublin. It is in oil on canvas and measures 133.5 cm x 169.5 cm. It is on indefinite loan to the National Gallery from the Jesuit Community in Leeson Street, Dublin.

This painting was as a candidate in the RTÉ competition looking for Ireland’s Favourite Painting, and Mel Gibson said that the cinematography in his The Passion of the Christaimed to imitate Caravaggio’s style. The arrest scene in his movie uses similar perspective, lighting, and placement of figures as the painting at the moment the soldiers seize upon Christ.

Caravaggio is one of the few artists to have brought about a radical change in art. He was the most famous painter of his time in Italy, and became a source of inspiration for hundreds of followers throughout Europe.

He was at the height of his fame when he painted ‘The Taking of Christ’ for a Roman aristocrat, the Marchesse Ciriaco Mattei at the end of 1602.

Breaking with artistic tradition, he provided a new visual rendering of the narrative of the Gospels, reducing the space around the three-quarter-length figures and avoiding any description of the setting. All his emphasis is directed on Judas and his kiss, on the Temple guards and on Christ, who appears overwhelmed and offers no resistance.

The fleeing disciple in disarray on the left is Saint John the Evangelist. His arms are raised, his mouth is open and gasping, his cloak is flying and is being snatched back by a soldier.

The fleeing figure of Saint John in his terror is in contrast to the man entering the scene at the far side. He is holding a lantern, it is ineffective, so that only the moon lights the scene from the upper left. This man’s features provide a self-portrait of Caravaggio at the age of 31, seen here as a passive spectator at the divine tragedy.

In all, there seven standing, three-quarter length figures in the painting: from left to right they are Saint John, Christ, Judas, two soldiers, a man with a lamp who provides a self-portrait of Caravaggio, and a third soldier. These seven figures are arrayed before a very dark background, in which the setting is disguised.

The contrast between the fleeing and terrorised figure of Saint John with the soldier who provides a self-portrait of the artist makes the point that even a sinner over 1,500 years after the Crucifixion and the Resurrection has a better understanding of who Christ is than his friends before the Easter events.

By the late 18th century, the painting was thought to have been lost, and its whereabouts remained unknown for about 200 years. In 1990, this masterpiece was recognized in the Jesuit house in Leeson Street, Dublin, and news of its rediscovery was published in November 1993.

The painting had been hanging in the Jesuits’ dining room since the early 1930s, but it had long been considered not the original but a copy by Gerard van Honthorst, also known as Gherardo delle Notti, one of Caravaggio’s Dutch followers.

This erroneous attribution had already been made while the painting was in the possession of the Mattei family, descendant of the aristocrat who had originally commissioned this masterpiece.

In 1802, the Mattei family sold it as a work by Honthorst to William Hamilton Nisbet, and it hung in his home in Scotland it hung until 1921. Later in the 1920s, it was sold to Dr Marie Lea-Wilson, who donated it in the 1930s to the Jesuits in Dublin, in gratitude for their support following the shooting of her husband, Captain Percival Lea-Wilson. He was a District Inspector in the Royal Irish Constabulary in Gorey, Co Wexford, and was shot by the IRA on 15 June 1920.

The painting remained in the possession of the Dublin Jesuits for about 60 years, until it was recognised in the early 1990s by Sergio Benedetti, Senior Conservator of the National Gallery of Ireland. He had been asked by Father Noel Barber, SJ, to examine a number of paintings in the Leeson Street house which the Jesuit community was planning to restore.

As layers of dirt and discoloured varnish were removed, the quality of the painting was revealed, and it was tentatively identified as Caravaggio’s lost work.

Much of the credit for verifying the authenticity of this painting belongs to Francesca Cappelletti and Laura Testa, two graduate students at the University of Rome. During a long period of research, they found the first recorded mention of ‘The Taking of Christ’ in an ancient and decaying account book documenting the original commission and payments to Caravaggio, in the archives of the Mattei family, kept in the cellar of a palazzo in the small town of Recanati.

The painting is now on indefinite loan to the National Gallery of Ireland by the Jesuit Community in Leeson Street.

Collect:

Lord God,
whose blessed Son our Saviour
gave his back to the smiters,
and did not hide his face from shame:
Give us grace to endure the sufferings
of this present time,
with sure confidence in the glory that shall be revealed;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord.

Post Communion Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ,
you humbled yourself in taking the form of a servant
and in obedience died on the cross for our salvation.
Give us the mind to follow you
and to proclaim you as Lord and King,
to the glory of God the Father.

Tomorrow: ‘The Last Supper’ (1592-1594), by Jacopo Tintoretto.