Angels & Mourning
Angels and mourning, Giotto absolutely captured the pain and suffering of personal loss. Some how this image helps with the loss of so many souls this year, the year of COVID 19.
Giotto
Illustration: Detail of the Lamentation, Scenes from the Life of Christ, Fresco, Cappella Scrovegni, Arena Chapel, Padua, 1304-06. Image from the Web Gallery of Art, an amazing resource for the teaching of the History of Art.
Plague and Pestilence
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Today, the coronavirus dominates all of our lives. Rather than writing about the virus, I just want to post an artistic masterpiece connected to St. John’s revelation of the end of days.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, from left to right Death, Famine, War and Pestilence charge forward as a galloping phalanx trampling everything in their path. Death as an old man with a pitchfork riding a skeletal horse travels with the jaws of hell beneath him. Famine holds the scales that will weigh human souls. War brandishes a sword.
Lastly is Plague, which connects to us. He wields a bow and arrow, a symbol of the plague from antiquity linked to Apollo and the Trojan War (1260 BC - 1180 BC). Siding with the Trojans, Apollo shot an arrow infected with the plague into the Greek encampment.
The plague of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was extremely frightening and horrifying. Today, so many of us are scared and ill, from every walk of life. We at least have science on our side to help us confront this enemy. And we have our faith. Don’t lose faith. And pray! We hope to present the Chaplet of Divine Mercy soon, which is a wonderful prayer for the world!
P.S. Even though the subject of this print would have been responding to fears surrounding the coming of the year 1500 and fears of the end of the world, the presence of Plague riding a horse still would have resonated. There were several outbreaks of the plague from the 14th to 17th centuries, and less frequently in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Albrecht Dürer (German, Nuremberg 1471-1528 Nuremberg), 1498, Woodcut, Princeton Art Museum, Laura P. Hall Memorial Collection, Inv. no. x1946-218 https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/5447
Suffering
Pietà
So much suffering going on everywhere in relation to the coronavirus.
For the moment, we just are showing an extraordinarily poignant and visceral representation of a mother suffering the loss of her son.--The Virgin Mary mourning over the cruel death of her son Jesus.
One of the meanings of Pieta is the feeling of sorrow for the troubles and sufferings of others.
Röttgen Pietà, Anonymous German artist, c. 1300-25, painted limewood, Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn, Photo by Ralf Heinz, DSC_6263. https://www.flickr.com/photos/ralf_heinz/8297482358