Cattainin (Caterina) Campodonico

Orengo, Lorenzo 1838-1909
Monument to Cattainin (Caterina) Campodonico 1881
Campo Santo di Staglieno, Genova, Liguria, Italy

Caterina Campodonico sold nuts and sweetmeats in the city of Genova. She wears her produce as decorative garlands

The purpose was to raise money for the purpose of raising a funeral monument.

Each chestnut and bread roll is lovingly carved, as is her lace-trimmed apron, her earrings and fringed shawl. She has become a dignified proletarian.

It was not by chance that Campodonico chose Orengo as the sculptor of her monument. He was the favourite sculptor of the other monuments of the deceased middle class who rest in the cemetery.

It is a statue of the age of realism; an affirmation of the individual. The deceased--no longer portrayed on a medallion but in full relief--is studied in an anecdotally realistic manner.

Allegory of Mortality

Punt, Jan 1711-1779
Allegory of Mortality
Chalk (black and red), watercolour (grey) on paper
Height: 16.8 cm; Width: 13.5 cm
Courtauld Art Gallery, London

Smoking Popes and Holy Smokes

Fr Ray Blake and Mac McLernon have reminded us smokers of the great debt we owe Pope Benedict XIII of blessed memory.

In 1624, on the logic that tobacco use prompts sneezing, which too closely resembles sexual ecstasy, Pope Urban VIII issued a worldwide smoking ban and threatened excommunication for those who smoked or took snuff in holy places. (Yes, the first cigarette in the morning is the best !)

Pope Innocent X issued another anti-smoking bull in 1650.

But in 1725 Good Pope Benedict XIII annulled all such edicts “in order to avoid the scandalous spectacle of dignitaries of the church hastening out in order to take a few clandestine whiffs in some corner away from spying eyes.” He himself liked to take snuff.

By the 18th Century, tobacco had earned a measure of respectability. Catholic priest Abbé Lattaignant wrote a popular song, "J'ai du bon tabac", ("I have good tobacco") which French schoolchildren still sing today.

By 1779, scenting a business opportunity, the Vatican opened its own tobacco factory in Garibaldi road in Rome (the name at that time is unknown).

By the first half of the nineteenth century,the production of tobacco was divided in three different manufactures:the snuff was produced in the S. Margherita Convent, the strong cigars were produced in the S. Michele home, and the light cigars were produced in S. Maria dell'Orto.

The fact that the tobacco plant has not been demonised at the Vatican may owe something to Pope Pius IX, who decided to leave the world a better place for smokers.

In 1863, he built a tobacco factory for cigar rolling in Rome's Trastevere neighborhood.

The buildings Latin inscription, recently restored, proudly states that the pope "built here from the ground up a factory for processing nicotine leaves." The big Tobacco factory was just ready in 1863.

This event is reminded on the inscription "PIUS IX OFFICINAM NICOTIANIS FOLIIS ELABORANDIS A SOLO EXTRUXIT. ANNO MDCCCLXIII" that is present on the building façade in Mastai's Square.

Now the beautiful building is the seat of the General Direction of the Autonomous Administration of the State Monopoly.

And on May. 19, 1930, Time Magazine reported that "The supreme Pontiff made known at the Vatican that in the Papal State the privilege of dealing in tobacco will shortly be constituted a government monopoly as in Italy."

Times may have changed but 100 years ago, smoking was definitely not a sin.

References:

British American Tobacco

Tuscan Cigars

The Atlantic

Mother Jeronima de la Asuncion

VELAZQUEZ, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y
(b. 1599, Sevilla, d. 1660, Madrid)
Abbess Jerónima de la Fuente 1620
Oil on canvas, 162 x 107,5 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Mother Jeronima de la Asuncion or Jeronima de la Fuente (May 9, 1555 - October 22, 1630) was the foundress of the first Catholic monastery in Manila and the Far East.

De la Asuncion's journey began in April 1620 from Toledo, Spain, with the initial group of six Poor Clare nuns. De la Asuncion was already 66 years old. The group set foot in the Philippines through the port of Bolinao on July 24, 1621. They reached Intramuros, the centre of Manila at the time, on August 5, 1621. Their trip from Toledo to Intramuros lasted one year, three months and nine days.

De la Asuncion's monastery became known as the Monastery of Santa Clara in Spanish Intramuros, Philippines. The Philippine monastery would be the first of its kind to be established both in Manila and in the Far East

For De la Asuncion's efforts as the first founding missionary woman in the Philippines, the Vatican had issued an apostolic decree for her beatification in 1734.

De la Asuncion's monastery in Intramuros was also immortalized in the novel, Noli Me Tangere, written by Jose Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines

The portrait was composed during De la Asuncion's stop-over in Seville, Spain, in 1620.

The painting is meant to convey the then sixty-six year old nun's "devoutness and strength of character through her stern expression and rugged countenance; her direct, outward gaze at the beholder; and her expressive accoutrements".

De la Asuncion was then wearing a dark, sober habit while holding a tome and a crucifix.

The elderly nun's gaze is keen and slightly melancholic, as if prepared for any sacrifice.

There are inscriptions on the painting.

The text across the top of the canvas read "It is good to await the salvation of God in silence", while the ribbon that flows from De la Asuncion's mouth stated "I shall be satisfied as long as He is glorified".

Mother Jerónima de la Asunción was called to the spiritual life at a young age, after reading a biography of Saint Clare. In 1569, she met Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), the renowned reformer of the Carmelite Order, who was establishing a Carmelite monastery in Toledo at the time. In 1570, she entered the Franciscan convent of Santa Isabel at the age of 15 and stayed until 1620.

The World

TURNER, Joseph Mallord William
(b. 1775, London, d. 1851, Chelsea)
War, the Exile and the Rock Limpet
1842
Oil on canvas, 79,5 x 79,5 cm
Tate Gallery, London

The World

Love built a stately house, where Fortune came,
And spinning fancies, she was heard to say,
That her fine cobwebs did support the frame,
Whereas they were supported by the same:
But Wisdom quickly swept them all away.

Then Pleasure came, who liking not the fashion,
Began to make Balconies, Terraces,
Till she had weakened all by alteration:
But rev'rend laws, and many a proclamation
Reformed all at length with menaces.

Then enter'd Sin, and with that Sycomore,
Whose leaves first sheltered man from drought and dew,
Working and winding slily evermore,
The inward walls and Sommers cleft and tore:
But Grace shor'd these, and cut that as it grew.

Then Sin combin'd with Death in a firm band
To raze the building to the very floor:
Which they effected, none could them withstand.
But Love and Grace took Glory by the hand,
And built a braver Palace than before.

George Herbert

The Parting of the Red Sea

Marc Chagall (1887-1985)
The Parting of the Red Sea, 1966,
Private collection in New York

Pope John Paul II

Blessed John XXIII: the last photo ?

Psalm 52

Psalm 52
Psalter. Autun, ca. 1470.
Signatuur 76 E 8. Fol. 21r
Nationale bibliotheek van Nederland
The Hague

The Steadfast Love of God Endures

To the choirmaster. A Maskil of David, when Doeg, the Edomite, came and told Saul, “David has come to the house of Ahimelech.”

52:1 Why do you boast of evil, O mighty man?
The steadfast love of God endures all the day.
2 Your tongue plots destruction,
like a sharp razor, you worker of deceit.
3 You love evil more than good,
and lying more than speaking what is right. Selah
4 You love all words that devour,
O deceitful tongue.

5 But God will break you down forever;
he will snatch and tear you from your tent;
he will uproot you from the land of the living. Selah
6 The righteous shall see and fear,
and shall laugh at him, saying,
7 “See the man who would not make
God his refuge,
but trusted in the abundance of his riches
and sought refuge in his own destruction!”

8 But I am like a green olive tree
in the house of God.
I trust in the steadfast love of God
forever and ever.
9 I will thank you forever,
because you have done it.
I will wait for your name, for it is good,
in the presence of the godly.

A New Caravaggio

Caravaggio
I bari
1594-1595
Oil on canvas; 94,15 x 131,25cm
Fort Worth (Texas), Kimbell Art Museum

I Bari or The Cardsharps is a well known painting of Caravaggio presently housed at The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.

Recently Sir Denis Mahon discovered another version of the painting. At first it was thought that it was merely a copy of the work in Fort Worth. On further investigation it has turned out to be a version done by Caravaggio himself. The authentication has been carried out by Professor Mina Gregori. The new painting is probably an earlier version of the subject executed about 1594 or 1595.

The differences are visible: the standpoint of the artist or viewer of the scene; the eyes and gazes of the sharps.

Both versions at one time were probably in the ownership of Cardinal Del Monte, the patron of Caravaggio.

The "new" Caravaggio: I Bari
Presently on exhibition in The Italian Institute of Culture, London

A Small Step in the Process Toward Reunion ?

The Times today under the banner Vatican joins historic talks to end 950-year rift with Orthodox church has a story on the Ravenna Declaration.


"The Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches took tentative steps towards healing their 950-year rift yesterday by drafting a joint document that acknowledges the primacy of the Pope.

The 46-paragraph “Ravenna Document”, written by a special commission of Catholic and Orthodox officials, envisages a reunified church in which the Pope could be the most senior patriarch among the various Orthodox churches.

Just as Pope John Paul II was driven by the desire to bring down Communism, so Pope Benedict XVI hopes passionately to see the restoration of a unified Church. Although he is understood to favour closer relations with traditional Anglicans, the Anglican Communion is unlikely to be party to the discussions because of its ordination of women and other liberal practices."

"Pope Benedict has called a meeting of cardinals from all over the world in Rome on November 23, when the document will be the main topic of discussion. The Ravenna “road map” concedes that “elements of the true Church are present outside the Catholic communion”.

It suggests that means “be sought out” to set up a new ecumenical council, similar to those of the early Church which drew up the Nicene and other creeds, and to which Catholic and Orthodox bishops would be invited. Such a council would attempt formally to end the schism of 1054 between East and West.

If the proposals move forward, the Pope would be acknowledged as the universal Primate, as he was before the schism. Although it is not stated outright, he would be expected by the Orthodox churches to relinquish the doctrine of infallibility. The proposals could also allow married priests in the Catholic Church, as already happens in the Orthodox.

However, continuing disputes within the Orthodox Church between Constantinople and Moscow mean that there is unlikely to be agreement among the entire Orthodox community about reconciliation with Rome.

The document, The Ecclesiological and Canonical Consequences of the Sacramental Nature of the Church, has been produced by a commission of Orthodox and Catholic bishops and theologians that met in Ravenna in western Italy last month. The Russian delegate walked out of the meeting, an indication of the enduring disputes within the Orthodox Church. "

One wonders if the politics of the situation will be an insurmountable obstacle towards religious reunion ?

The Madonna with the Christ child

Jean Fouquet (1420 - 1481)
The Madonna with the Christ child
Book of Hours of Simon de Varie
Paris, 1455; Tours, c. 1455.
Vellum, 99 leaves, 116 x 85 mm. - 74 G 37a, fol. 1v-2r
Koninklijke Bibliotheek , National Library of the Netherlands,
The Hague

Pilgrimage at Sunset (Sunrise)

FRIEDRICH, Caspar David
(b. 1774, Greifswald, d. 1840, Dresden)
Pilgrimage at Sunset (Sunrise)1805
Sepia, 405 x 620 mm
Kunstsammlungen, Weimar

The Church from an Asian perspective: too Westernised and too intellectual ?

In The Times there is an interesting obituary of the late Cardinal Stephen Fumio Hamao, former Bishop of Yokohama and former president of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travellers who died on November 8, 2007.

"The Japanese Cardinal Stephen Fumio Hamao, a former president of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travellers, thought the Vatican “excessively Westernised”. The Church's focus on Europe, he thought, meant that the Roman Curia struggled to understand the mentality of Asia's Christians.

Recent papal exhortations for priests to use more Latin merely reflected, said Hamao, the Vatican's inability to comphrehend the culture of the Far East. Using Latin, said the Cardinal, was “impossible for Asians”, “European- centred” and “too much”, although years earlier Hamao had instructed the Emperor of Japan in the language while he was still a crown prince.

Likewise, while Jesus and the Gospel appealed to the Japanese, Hamao judged the Church's westernised theology “over-intellectualised” and too alien to touch the Japanese heart. To counter this Eurocentric focus, Hamao urged Pope Benedict XVI to appoint more Asians to the Roman Curia. Three weeks later the Pope appointed an Indian, Cardinal Ivan Dias of Bombay, prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples.

Stephen Fumio Hamao was born in Tokyo in 1930, the third son of Viscount Hamao Shiro. His family, like many Japanese, kept both a Shinto and a Buddhist temple at home, until in 1942 when his widowed mother became a Catholic. Hamao was baptised four years later, along with his brother, a future chamberlain to Emperor Akihito of Japan.

After attending the state university in Tokyo, he entered the seminary, a decision for which his mother was criiticised vociferously by her family. In December 1957, after studies in Rome, Hamao was ordained a priest, later becoming auxiliary bishop of Tokyo and in 1979 was appointed Bishop of Yokohama, Japan's second most populous city. While there, Hamao became head of the AsiaOceania branch of the charity Caritas and was noted for his concern for the poor, refugees and immigrants. In 1995 he was elected president of the Japanese Episcopal Conference; three years later John Paul II named him president of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travellers.

Made a cardinal in 2003, Hamao resigned from the council in March 2006. A month earlier he helped to persuade the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints to beatify 188 17th-century Japanese martyrs. The beatification — the last step before sainthood — will be the first to take place in Japan, and will occur in Nagasaki next November. The beatifications, Hamao declared, would benefit all Japanese, not just Christians, as the right to religious belief was “a fundamental human right”. While Japan upholds freedom on religious belief, Hamao said many there view religion as a matter of family tradition, rather than personal conviction. The Christian faith, he added, while respected in Japan, is often perceived, because Christians attend Church every Sunday, as compared to the once-yearly obligatory temple visit for Buddhists — as exceptionally strict."

He was responsible for the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People`s Document: People on the Move N° 97, April 2005- The Instruction Erga migrantes caritas Christi: a Response of the Church to the Migration Phenomenon Today which is on the Vatican website. and other important documents on migration listed here.

The Missionary Congregation of St Gemma Galgani.

The Italian journal Adista reports on an unfortunate and disturbing dispute between Bishop Marcello Semeraro, Bishop of Albano and the Missionary Congregation of St Gemma Galgani.

According to Adista, the nuns' job was teaching Christian doctrine to the children of the Parish. They have been sacked by the Bishop of Albano, from Laziale, near Rome, because they refused to accept a clause in their contract which required that they be home helps of the Parish Priest and the Vice-Parish Priest of the Parish of Saints Peter and Paul in the town of Aprília .

The Bishop’s demand was considered 'unacceptable' by the Superior of the Mother House in Lucca, Tuscany, about 10 miles north-east of Pisa.

As a result the Bishop has dismissed the three sisters in spite of a petition signed by 1500 parishioners supporting them.

Bishop Semeraro did not even take into account the fact that the priests in question have stated that they 'had not asked for the services of the sisters in view of the fact that they prefer their present condition and their independence.'

On October 21 the three sisters had to leave the parish.

The Sisters of St Gemma are one of about 15 small religious congregrations that are associated in varying degrees to the Passionist order.

They were founded by Mother Gemma Giannini (1884-1971) who knew St. Gemma Galgani in 1899 and lived in close friendship with her.

When the monastery of the Passionist Nuns at Lucca was opened, she entered in 1906 and remained a Passionist nun until 1938.

Because she had not recovered her health, despite repeated exits for cures, she left definitively with the idea of gathering a group of women who would live in the spirit of St. Gemma outside the cloister.

With two other companions, she began the Institute on June 8, 1939 at Villa Guerra (Camigliano, Lucca), because "it seemed to her that the Lord would want the places sanctified by St. Gemma to be in the care of persons living according to her spirit."

They are committed "to loving and making Jesus known through the teaching of catechism to little ones, through meditation on the Passion, as rural catechists, especially in rural areas".

The sisters take the Special vow of the Passionists. The first approbation was from the Ordinary of La Spezia in 1946.

As a Diocescan congregation, they are in theory at the beck and call of the Bishop.

One does wonder if the Bishop had taken leave of his senses. Good on the Mother Superior for not allowing her sisters to be unpaid household druges.

St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face.

Today Benedict XVI expressed his joy at being able to pray before the relics of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, which are in Rome accompanied by pilgrims and the bishop from the saint's home diocese.

At the end of today's general audience, the Pope greeted the faithful from the French Diocese of Bayeux and Lisieux, and Bishop Pierre Auguste Pican, who are in Rome on pilgrimage, with the relics of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face.

The Holy Father recalled how "120 years ago, Thérèse of Lisieux came to Rome to ask permission of Pope Leo XIII to enter the Carmelite order, despite her youth. Eighty years ago, Pope Pius XI proclaimed her patron saint of missions, and in 1997, Pope John Paul II declared her a doctor of the Church."

"In this audience," he continued, "I will have the joy of praying before her relics, as will many faithful over the course of this week in various churches in Rome."

"St. Thérèse would have liked to learn the languages of the Bible in order to better understand sacred Scripture," he said. "Following her example and that of St. Jerome, dedicate time to frequent reading of the Bible. By familiarizing yourselves with the Word of God, you will discover Christ and remain in intimate contact with him."

Chatterton

Henry Wallis 1830-1916
Chatterton 1856
Oil on canvas
support: 622 x 933 mm frame: 905 x 1205 x 132 mm; 24 1/2 x 36 3/4 inches
painting
The Tate Gallery, London

At the exhibition in Manchester in 1857, there was unanimous admiration for Henry Wallis's Chatterton. It was widely regarded as the most popular painting in the exhibition, and according to a later report, "it needed two policemen for its protection in Manchester against the crushing crowd."

It appealed to the popular Victorian sensibility.

This highly romanticised picture created a sensation when it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856.

Thomas Chatterton was a poet whose 'gothic' writings, melancholy life and youthful suicide fascinated artists and writers of the nineteenth century.

At an early age, he wrote fake medieval histories and poems, which he copied onto old parchment and passed off as manuscripts from the Middle Ages. The fraud was later discovered. In London he struggled to earn a living writing tales and songs for popular publications.

Penniless, he took his own life by swallowing arsenic at the age of seventeen.

Manchester: Tintoretto

TINTORETTO (b. 1518, Venezia, d. 1594, Venezia)
Esther before Ahasuerus
1547-48
Oil on canvas, 207,4 x 273 cm
Royal Collection, Windsor

Another of the paintings exhibited at Manchester in 1857.

The subject of the picture is taken from the Book of Esther.

Esther, the Jewish queen of the Persian emperor, Ahasuerus, intervenes on behalf of her people in Persia who were threatened with death in a proclamation issued by the chief minister, Haman.

Esther attended the court in regal dress in order to appeal to Ahasuerus. 'But as she was speaking, she fell fainting. And the King was agitated, and all his servants sought to comfort her' (15:7).

Ahasuerus stands on the left at the top of the flight of steps at the foot of which Esther kneels, supported by her entourage. Following this intercession and further deliberation Ahasuerus overrules Haman, who was himself hanged as a consequence of his ill-judged policy.

The story of Esther was often treated as a prefiguration of the role of the Virgin in the Last Judgement.

Manchester: St Francis

BELLINI, Giovanni
(b. ca. 1426, Venezia, d. 1516, Venezia)
St Francis in Ecstasy
1480-85
Oil on panel, 120 x 137 cm
Frick Collection, New York

Influenced by Flemish painting, St Francis stands in the midst of a landscape which is replete with the complex symbolic allusions of Flemish art - plants, animals, and household objects alluding to Franciscan ideals of poverty and humility.

Resembling a stigmatisation, this scene may be, rather, a meditation on Francis identification with creation

This painting was in private hands and exhibited at the Manchester Exhibition in 1857. Now it is in the Frick Collection in New York City.

One wonders at its effect on the people who came to see the Manchester Exhibition in 1857.

“The Greatest Show on Earth” : Manchester 1857

Lindsay Duguid in the TLS recounts “The Greatest Show on Earth” in Manchester 1857:

Two suits of sixteenth-century armour, positioned between a television screen and an information panel at the entrance to this new exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery, are the guardians of a display that leads the visitor into a double past. Art Treasures in Manchester: 150 years on contains 160 works of art from an earlier, grander show, held in 1857 with the plain but ambitious title, Art Treasures of the United Kingdom. What we see today gives some idea of the serious nature of that assembly. Italian Old Masters, Dutch genre paintings, portraits by Reynolds and Lawrence, landscapes by Turner and Constable, Pre-Raphaelite narrative pictures, watercolours and art photography are austerely hung alongside cabinets full of a somewhat miscellaneous selection of medieval ivories, majolica, Venetian glass, Chinese and Sèvres porcelain. Objects such as Lucrezia Borgia’s mirror and the “Cellini Shield” give the impression of an eclectic, connoisseurial country-house collection.

This cannot have been the effect of the original show, which was on an industrial scale: over 16,000 works housed in a 700-foot-long specially designed iron and glass pavilion in the botanical gardens on the outskirts of the city. From May to October, the 1.3 million visitors who arrived at Old Trafford by train were catered for by several classes of dining room and entertained by a small orchestra conducted by Charles Hallé. The official opening was attended by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and there was a good deal of press coverage of “The Greatest Show on Earth”, ranging from pious editorials to facetious commentaries written in dialect (Tom Treddlehoyle’s “A Peep at t’Manchister Art Treasures Exhebishan”) and comical cartoons. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Mrs Gaskell visited often; Ruskin lectured on art versus commerce; Disraeli compared Manchester to Renaissance Florence in The Times; and Engels wrote enthusiastically to Marx: “you and your wife ought to come up this summer and see the thing”. Conceived as a response to the 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park and the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1855, and put together in fourteen months, it was a feat of organization and a demonstration of civic pride – just as this well-curated, unpatronizing show is perhaps a nod in the direction of Liverpool, whose year as European City of Culture begins in January 2008.

It acts as a sort of time capsule, providing evidence of its phantom predecessor, which itself was a demonstration of a new attitude to great art. In today’s aesthetically spare galleries, the blown-up photographs from 1857 show canvases in heavy frames hung three or four deep up to the vaulted ceiling, aisles full of marble statues, and well-dressed gentlefolk in sociable groups. The works were originally uncaptioned, the catalogue merely listing title and artist’s name (though Prince Albert, the exhibition’s patron, had insisted on the innovative, chronological arrangement of the exhibits). The year 1857, just six years after Turner’s death, twenty after Constable’s, saw the start of Constable’s rise to pre-eminence and the height of veneration for such “Modern Masters” as William Etty (fourteen works on display then, one now), Edwin Landseer (twenty-three reduced to one) and Holman Hunt (five reduced to one). Henry Wallis’s “Death of Chatterton”, painted the previous year, was voted the most popular modern painting. Space was found for “An Episode in the Happier Days of King Charles I”, 1853, by Frederick Goodall, still a stirring sight, and William Mulready’s “The Wolf and the Lamb”, 1821, still a puzzle.

Among the visitors, Tennyson might have admired Arthur Hughes’s new work, “April Love”, the inspiration for which had been his 1832 poem “The Miller’s Daughter”, and the subject of Thomas Lawrence’s “Portrait of Georgina Maria Leicester, as Hope”, 1811, was able as an elderly matron to admire the image of her younger self, just as that artist began the long decline in his posthumous reputation. Some attributions have not stuck; what was thought to be a Giotto is now firmly assigned to Spinello Aretino; the Duccio is really a Sano di Pietro; the Duke of Newcastle’s Correggio is now labelled as by Francesco Furini. The original lenders – nearly a thousand of them who sent their works, uninsured, out of a spirit of patriotism and philanthropy – were in many cases private individuals, whose treasures are now in museums and art galleries (the Royal collections, Christ Church, Oxford, and the Royal Academy have been able to hold on to theirs). A map in the final room shows how, in later years, many of the original exhibits were sold on across the world: a Titian to Boston, a Rembrandt to New York, Gainsborough’s “Blue Boy” to San Marino, California, a Rubens to Cologne. Not long after the exhibition closed with its profit of £304, and the pavilion was taken down, the great dispersal from British private collections began.