Art and Theology Professors in Conversation

Theology and art Professors in Conversation

For three weeks in the summer of 2016, twelve faculty members from the art, art history, theology, biblical studies, and Christian ministries departments of both Catholic and Protestant liberal arts colleges gathered to address the disconnect often found between the art departments and Christian studies departments at such institutions.

Funded by the Lilly Endowment Inc., this Summer Seminar for College Teachers was hosted by Professor John Skillen and the Studio for Art, Faith & History, and was housed in the renovated 13th-century monastery leased by Gordon College in Orvieto, Italy. The Seminar benefited from Orvieto’s location in Umbria, with Rome, Florence, Siena, Assisi, and Arezzo within easy reach. Excursions to these and other locations took participants to ten of the major fresco cycles of the Italian Renaissance that provided touchstones for our discussion.

We examined a period in premodern Italian culture that knew no such split between the work of art and the life of Christian faith and theology. We considered the conditions in the modern period that have fostered division, and we brainstormed new initiatives to reconnect the training of young artists and of future church leaders.

Afterwards, participants were invited to write brief personal narratives that highlighted one or two particular aspects that encapsulated the experience. Several of these essays are collated here.

Lisa DeBoer (art historian, Westmont College)

“… and eating with fourteen other excellent, thoughtful people,” over meals from the cucina of Maria

The three weeks in Orvieto, living with, traveling with, reading with, poking around town with, relaxing with and eating with, fourteen other excellent, thoughtful people reminded me of what “deep learning” feels like. But equally important was what I learned about un-learning in the course of the seminar.

What I learned (again) about learning

It has been 28 years since I was an undergraduate at a Christian liberal arts college. I spent another eight years in graduate school, but that’s a different type of learning. That’s professional education. By the end of our three weeks in Orvieto, what struck me most was how the character of how I was learning felt so much more like the way I learned in college, as opposed to the way I learned in graduate school. This was first and foremost, a residential, Christian, liberal arts experience. I learned like I want my students to learn. With the people in the room, not just alongside them; engaging in free-range, “big picture” thinking, not only discipline specific and disciplinarily bound thinking.

On the one hand, this rediscovery is a truism. We learn best in community because we learn from one another. We learn best through engaged back-and-forth discussion, following the questions where they lead, not simply through the acquisition of the facts and methods required by any given discipline. We learn best in a group that has shared goals, rather than in a competitive, zero-sum environment. True, all of that. But I’d not had the chance to be on the receiving end of this kind of learning for a long time. I help create it for my students in my classroom (I hope). And I enjoy little snatches of it here and there with my colleagues on campus over a good lunch discussion, or at a faculty retreat, or sometimes in a committee context. But those moments, however refreshing, are intermittent, and incidental. “Christian Liberal Arts Learning” is something we do mostly for our students. Not all that often for ourselves.

The three weeks in Orvieto, living with, traveling with, reading with, poking around town with, relaxing with and eating with, fourteen other excellent, thoughtful people reminded me of what “deep learning” feels like. The “eating with” was especially important—not least due to Maria’s amazing cooking. It’s hard for me to imagine the conviviality we shared around the seminar table happening in quite the same way, without the fellowship we shared around the dining room table twice a day. Leah’s “mutual invitation” exercises were also key to this deep learning. In an ordinary academic seminar, we could anticipate learning from our varied disciplinary expertise and our varied personal backgrounds. That would happen in any traditional, academic summer seminar. But in this setting we also learned from our faith backgrounds, and even deeper, we were together long enough and in enough different ways to learn through and from our different personalities and temperaments. Even though, when we talked in seminar, we tended to preface our remarks with some disciplinary or confessional frame, it was also the case that we were all clearly speaking out of who we were in all of our grand, beautiful, messy, human particularity. Learning in this kind of setting is truly formative; it’s an education of the whole person.

What I learned about unlearning

These thoughts have been percolating in my head for the last six weeks. But now the new school year is almost upon me, and I’ve got to revise my syllabi. Including my Art 124: Italian Renaissance Art syllabus. How timely!

Except that my summer seminar has unsettled my thinking about what this class should be about. I realize, in looking over what I did the last time I taught this class, that I taught Italian Renaissance Art (surprise, surprise) like an art historian. That is, I more-or-less took for granted that certain key artists and monuments, that stylistic change over time, and that dominant patterns of patronage were the main currents we needed to trace. As a specialist in Northern European early modern painting, the “big question” guiding my syllabus was a disciplinary, methodological question: how did early and obsessive attention to Italian Renaissance art embed particular assumptions about art in the very bones of the discipline? And are those assumptions the most appropriate ones for the study of all art, as early practitioners of the discipline seemed to think the case? Evidently, I’d bought the argument that those assumptions were at least appropriate and adequate for the study of Italian Renaissance art.

Our seminar has prompted me to ask whether the tools of the discipline, notwithstanding their roots in the study of Italian Renaissance art, are fully adequate for its study. After all, art history as an academic discipline took shape hundreds of years after the art in question was made. The interests of those earliest art historians in attribution, in stylistic innovation (note, innovation, not merely change), and in the ferreting out of textual sources for complex symbolic and iconological programs gives us one take on what’s noteworthy about Italian Renaissance art. It's not a trivial take, or a wrong take. But is it the only take?

Challenged by our discussions and our site visits, I’m trying to teach this class a little less like an art historian, and a little more like a person trying my best to imagine what life felt like for the original makers and viewers of these works, and what, about their experience of the world, might be important for me to take seriously. How did living in a more “enchanted” world, where nature was a divinely ordered “cosmos” rather than a scientifically defined “universe;” where the self was experienced as porous to that cosmos, rather “buffered” (Charles Taylor’s word) from external powers; where personhood was understood in the context of community, rather than as the achievement of autonomy—how did all of this inflect Giotto’s arena chapel? or the elaborate tombs of prominent humanists? or the meanings of the descriptors “graceful” and “marvelous” and “sweet” as they play through the pages of Vasari? Above all, how does this world challenge our world? And vice versa?

Thanks to all of you, for reminding me what good learning feels like and for challenging me to remember that while I can and should be an art historian in the classroom, I can also be more.

Amy Hughes (theologian and early church historian, Gordon College)

How can I measure the impact of sustained and expansive ecumenical conversations upon how I view the church? I am still exploring the architecture in progress in my mind of art and theology, church and pedagogy, and history and community as a result of this seminar. But I can choose three “thick” moments that characterize my experience.

On Looking Up and “Looking Along”: The Baptistery in Florence

Something happens when we look up, craning our necks to view the dome of the Pantheon in Rome or the exquisite ceiling of the baptistery in Florence. As I stood in the center of that baptistery I thought about how centuries of architects and artists have been creating spaces that compel us to look up. What a marvel that I am one of many over the course of centuries to throw my head back and squint to capture every magnificent detail! But why put such beauty so high where accessibility is limited and where the details might be lost to one so far below?

I realized while I stood there rubbing my neck that those responsible for the baptistery intended for us to privilege a kind of formative and intuitive seeing in a physical space similar to what C.S. Lewis called “looking along” versus the analytical “looking at.” It’s a good thing to consider the lines and the artistry and other “looking at” kinds of things but the liturgical setting of a baptistery is surely meant to provoke a “looking along,” a perceiving of a narrative beyond us as humans that reforms us in the waters of the font.

Looking up is a physical motion that unlocks the tightness in our chest that comes from the stasis of living and looking horizontally. This is how we function on our shared plane that allows for relation between people, the ability to walk in a straight line, and have a sense of equilibrium. Throwing one’s head back to look up is a submissive and a vulnerable posture. It also unlocks a set of muscles in our upper chest and throat that can provoke emotional release and cause disequilibrium. Surely it’s no accident that the biblical narrative depicted on the ceiling of the baptistery demands a throwing back of one’s head in effect prompting that submissive and emotive vulnerability in response to the narrative of the gospel that requires transformation. It takes more than a looking at but a “looking along” to access this story, this truth that is not of our equilibrium or terrestrial mode.

The “Stone Table Conversations”

On our first Saturday a group of us decided to hike down from Orvieto and up the ridge to the Capucchin monastery. It was a hot day and the sometimes-overgrown path made for an arduous trip. Once on the monastery grounds we stopped at a stone table that afforded a beautiful view of Orvieto to rest before we made the final, steep ascent to the monastery. Our reflections on our discussions over the week bubbled to the surface. After an hour or so of discussing art and justice, Flannery O’Connor and Augustine, we pulled ourselves away and continued to the monastery. On our way back we found ourselves at the stone table again. Perhaps it was the need to rest after the exertion, or the meditative surroundings, or our growing comfort with one another, or some combination of all of those things, but what transpired next was a dialogic feast at a stone table. Building upon our earlier conversation we found ourselves in the midst of an ecumenical search for understanding: what truly are the differences between Catholics and Protestants? The varied experiences of both the Catholics and Protestants present allowed for a rich conversation about how we can articulate differences in ways that do justice to one another instead of settling for benign indifference or even subterranean animosity. The rich resources we each brought to this table from respective fields sparked important moments of clarity and wonder.

Athens and Jerusalem

I was not prepared for the fast-moving mob that carried me through the Vatican Museums to the Raphael rooms on our last excursion of the Seminar. Tired and claustrophobic, we finally arrived in the library of Pope Julius II and everything opened up. Now there was plenty of space for us to look and discuss some of Raphael’s most famous pieces. My mind also opened in a way that I know was only possible after spending three weeks with such knowledgeable colleagues and discussing the power of art, audience, theology, and formation in situ.

I had, of course, seen the famous so-called School of Athens before in a book, but I had no idea that it was situated as part of a larger visual meditation on the nature of truth. The disputation between Plato and Aristotle about the nature of truth and reason is meant to be viewed in relation with the fresco of the Holy Sacrament across from it, a stunning visualization of narrative theology that, in effect, illuminates the limitation inherent in the famous philosophical disagreement. The entire room, including the ceiling, is really one work. And yet, during the forty-five minutes we stood in that room, I witnessed group after group who filed in, stood with their backs to the Raphael’s gorgeous image of the church spanning heaven and earth, took a photo of the School of Athens, and then shuffled out. It makes sense considering that the School of Athens is the only one that ends up on mugs and t-shirts. The power of experiencing art in situ confronted us again in that room, that these pieces were meant to be seen together: Athens and Jerusalem, theology and philosophy in dialogue. Our discussions in that room reflected our having spent so much time together, practicing dialogue between disciplines, and navigating faith distinctives. I opened my heart and mind and drank deep of the moment, for I had a new taste for the rich mixture of the draught of art and theology, and it had changed me.

Angela Russell Christman (theologian, Loyola University, Maryland)

I wondered then and still do: what shape would our common life have, what surprising gifts might we discover, if all of us practiced the virtue of restraint?

Our three weeks in Orvieto inhabit a dream-like place in my memory. The experience of living in that beautiful town and discussing theology and art with new colleagues is not something I could easily forget—nor would I want to! When I recall our time together, I still feel waves of gratitude to everyone who was part of the seminar (including Maria our cook and Isabelle and Gianna the assistants).

On the Saturday at the end of the first week—a week packed with provocative discussions as well as excursions to Florence and Siena—a group of us hiked up to the Capuchin convent outside of town. The hike was both strenuous and exhilarating, because the convent is at the top of an incredibly steep hill. Although we enjoyed some breathtaking views of Orvieto along the way, what stands out in my memory is the conversation we had when we stopped to eat our picnic lunch. As we reflected on the previous week, the notion of restraint emerged as a theme.

What precisely do I mean by restraint? It involves the acknowledgement and acceptance of the constraints we have by nature, as finite beings created by God to love and serve him, as well as the recognition that the modern illusion of autonomy is just that, an illusion. Restraint is closely linked to humility, the antidote to pride. For me, this concept has become key to understanding various facets of our seminar, including a number of the artistic masterpieces we visited. It crystallizes many of the issues we discussed, and it ties together the ways in which I constantly felt that our discussions of theology and art are relevant for major issues facing our communities, our country, and indeed, the world.

A profound example of the way in which the concept of restraint is manifested visually is found in the Convent of San Marco in Florence. While each of the convent’s cells is unique in the way it exhorted its inhabitants to heed the Gospel, the private cell of Cosimo de Medici stands out. While many of the monks’ cells depict a scene from the Passion, Cosimo’s cell portrays the adoration of the Magi. On the left side of the lunette sits Mary with the infant Christ in her lap and Joseph standing nearby. The three kings—representing youth and middle and old age—gaze reverently on the Christ child. While a few others in their entourage also seem focused on Jesus, most are not. Indeed, the figures on the right side of the lunette seem oblivious to the significance of the one whom the wise men worship. They appear distracted and absorbed with worldly cares. Two of them are carrying weapons, one a sword and the other a mace.

In the lower, central portion of the lunette is a niche for the display of the Body of Christ and below that is the tabernacle. Within the niche Christ is depicted as the Man of Sorrows (Isaiah 53). He stands in a sarcophagus, crowned with thorns, the horizontal beam of the Cross behind him. On the sides of the niche one can see some of the arma Christi, specifically, the pillar on which Christ was scourged, the sword used to pierce his side, and the vinegar-soaked sponge extended to him when he cried out, “I thirst.” The contrast between the weapons of the distracted courtiers and the arma Christi could not be greater. While the sword and mace convey the desires for worldly power and glory of those who wield them, the arma Christi disclose the humility of Christ, who allowed these weapons to be used against himself for our salvation. I do not know what thoughts this fresco prompted in Cosimo, but for me, its message was clear: Restrain your disordered desires, conform your life to Christ’s, and embrace the humility of the Man of Sorrows.

Many of the other masterpieces we saw articulate a similar message, albeit in different ways. Another favorite of mine was the series of frescoes that decorate the cloister walls and narrate the life of St. Benedict at the Abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggiore. The bucolic setting and the muted colors of the frescoes beckon viewers to stop and meditate. Here the monks were—and still are—encouraged to follow Christ by contemplating and imitating the life of their order’s founder. “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ,” writes St. Paul (1 Cor 11:1). Paul’s pithy counsel captures well an important facet of veneration of the saints: they offer us concrete examples of those who have restrained their desires and reordered them so as to conform themselves to Christ.

In our current climate, the virtue of restraint is rarely recognized, and some even see it in a negative light. In popular culture it is associated with a lack: a loss of selfhood and the absence of creativity. The daily meals prepared by Maria, our magnificent chef at Gordon College’s monastery property in Orvieto, give the lie to this assumption. Consistent with the Slow Food movement that has deep roots in Orvieto, Maria prepared delicious meals for us, all the while accepting the constraint of using ingredients readily available during the season. Contrary to the popular stereotype of restraint, Maria’s creativity as a chef was not stifled by this, but rather took flight. This was even clearer to us on weekends, when we had “leftovers night.” The need to stay within a budget—another restraint—meant that Maria saved any significant leftovers for the weekend meals. “Leftovers night” showcased Maria’s inventiveness, and we loved seeing (and tasting!) the way in which she combined dishes from earlier in the week or augmented them to create entirely new, but equally scrumptious, meals. As was true for the late Medieval and early Renaissance artists of the bottega, working within constraints did not hinder Maria’s creativity but rather fostered it.

This concept of restraint is relevant to thinking about not only paintings of the past, but also the crises of our world today. As wonderful as our three weeks in Orvieto were, our idyllic time was shattered on more than one occasion by horrific news from back home in the US, both of wrenching violence and of the brutal political scene. I wondered then and still do: What shape would our common life have, what surprising gifts might we discover, if all of us practiced the virtue of restraint?

Brenton Good (painter and printmaker, Messiah College)

Comparing William Kentridge’s mural in grime along the Tiber to the great fresco cycles of the Italian Renaissance

What the Lilly Fellows Program Summer Seminar revealed to me was how refreshing it was for individuals from a variety of disciplines to come together and discuss art in great depth. Our discussions about the functions of art bounced quickly from a point made by a theologian, picked up by an art historian, commented on by a studio artist, then passed on to an English scholar. These exchanges were at times exhilarating, and done with both compassion and graciousness in a sincere desire to move forward as a group and discover something new.

What I still find fascinating is how the discussions within our structured meeting times naturally flowed over into our leisure time. Points made during a focused discussion found their way into conversations over coffee or walking around town. The communal experiences – the daily readings, the travel days, the food shared – seemed to intertwine organically and to influence my own time spent drawing and painting, discovering and rediscovering works of art throughout central Italy, shadows cast across a valley, or ancient stains and lichens growing on a stone wall.

For me, this unique experience can be illustrated by two separate but relatable stories – my own discovery while painting during this time and a surprising visit to a contemporary work in Rome by the artist William Kentridge.

(Re)Discovering Landscape

During our first few days in Orvieto we visited the San Brizio chapel in Orvieto’s famous Duomo, spending time viewing and discussing Luca Signorelli’s fresco cycle illustrating scenes from the book of Revelation. As an undergraduate student I was lucky enough to have studied in Orvieto for a semester with the Gordon College program, and already had a sketchbook full of these figures and compositions. What I found myself being drawn to on this occasion, however, was the gridded windows behind the chapel altar. Simple panes of uncolored glass, some old and stained, some newly replaced and a stark clean white. This simple juxtaposition of values (and cleanliness) presented itself as a structure to investigate, and using this matrix as a meditation I began to produce small paintings in gouache. Although these new works directly related to the San Brizio windows (and therefore that place and specific memory) they were still very much in conversation with the geometric gridded prints and paintings I have made over the past fifteen years. This image was meditative, personal, and very formalist, but what came next was more jarring and unexpected.

During our trips to Pienza, Siena, and Assisi I began to draw the patchwork landscape of fields and tree lines - partially as a way of investigating geometry, but more so a recording of these spaces in that moment. During one of our warmer days in Orvieto I ventured out to find a spot with both some shade from the sun and a cool breeze, finding this along the western wall looking out over the surrounding valley. These views were familiar to me, but as I began a watercolor study of the landscape, it was the overlapping range of yellow-greens, the dark shadows cast by tree lines, and the obsessively complex planes of the fields that resonated most. With only one final week left I became obsessed with these colors and these forms, capturing as many records as I could. On one hand these landscapes seem to have little to do with my other abstract work, but perhaps they have everything to do with it. This range of influences, from a fresco to a window to a landscape, reflect the range of voices and disciplines present throughout the seminar itself - unexpected juxtapositions sometimes bear surprising fruit.

Triumphs & Laments

Arriving in Italy I was aware of a newly completed work by the contemporary artist William Kentridge in Rome, and was hoping to find time to visit it at some point on my own. What I was unprepared for was how much it would relate and reflect the topics being discussed within the seminar itself. Titled “Triumphs & Laments,” the Kentridge “mural” is a procession of monumental figures pressure-washed (with the aid of stencils) out of the grime of the travertine walls lining the Tiber river. These figures record the history of Rome, cryptically referencing a range of events both art historical, political, and personal. The work itself is similar to other works by the artist that often balance an incredible heaviness with whimsy or play. We had spent the first part of the seminar using the art of the fifteenth century as examples of what can be done when a range of artists, scholars, patrons, and communities come together to create art – and here it was being done in 2016.

Walking along the wall the surfaces were hypnotic, with the figures overwhelming the viewer in both scale and narrative content. Although not explicitly religious, the civic responsibility was a clear factor as well. The community was involved in the process, along with the location itself being chosen to help a neglected neighborhood. When the work was dedicated in April of 2016 it was accompanied by a theatrical performance with original composed music, and found Romans en mass attending on the alternate side of the Tiber. Their own story was being told, and in interviews a range of attendees expressed not only their love and admiration for the project, but also the responsibility of every Roman to come out and experience the work.

The more time I spend reflecting on these three weeks the more I find myself comparing Kentridge’s mural to the great fresco cycles we visited. It seems to check off all of the boxes we were analyzing as a group. Having just taken trips to Assisi, to Monte Oliveto Maggiore, to Siena, the parallels to Renaissance storytelling was obvious. A stark difference (and certainly a contemporary spin) here is longevity—the Kentridge work will supposedly remain for three to five years as it is obscured by a new layer of grime and dirt, fading and eventually disappearing.

Katie Davis (literature of the western heritage, University of Dallas)

Maria the cook is a culinary artist, and her goal is to honor the body … and so is the goal of painter-artist Luca Signorelli.

Each time I sat down to write this essay about my personal experience as a participant in the 2016 Lilly Summer Seminar for College Teachers, I felt compelled to begin with an account of how well we ate. Maria, our cook, was a magician in the kitchen. She prepared lovely meals every day for lunch and dinner. She had a great memory, too: if someone mentioned in passing how much he liked her risotto with frutti del mare or chicken balsamico, those dishes mysteriously reappeared later on – better even than the first time. She also noticed what wasn’t as popular. By watching us eat, she learned our preferences and accommodated for them in the menu. She watched us, got to know us, and endeavored to make us happy by providing nutritious, satisfying, delicious meals.

Samuel Smartt (communication arts, Calvin College)

What is missing, it seems to me, is theological engagement with secular work in the arts, broadly construed.

Early in his presentations, John Skillen introduced the notion of liturgy as the primary lens through which to think about the both the functionality of late-medieval art and the means by which communities participated in that art. Implied was that the loss of a liturgical approach accounts for, in large measure, both the separation between artist and community we find in the Romantic-modernist paradigm and the birth of a distinction between “art for art’s sake” and craft. For me, this was quite provocative – it was the inciting incident that introduced for me the major conflict in the narrative of the seminar, and prompted the central dramatic question that would give shape to the rest of my experience: must the work of Christian artists today be liturgical?

Later in the first week, John started us out with the question, “Why is it that we as a culture are so allergic to didactic art?” This prompted fascinating discussions about the relationship between sophistication, formation (a word we opted for over didacticism) and functionality in artwork. Our conversations on liturgy continued with the visit of guest speaker Bill Dyrness, but now with an eye towards the “new aesthetics” that emerged from the Reformation – specifically the birth of the intellectual and emotional “cold gaze.” In various ways we problematized “disinterested contemplation” as the dominant mode of engaging with art in our time, as well as the notion of artist as individual genius primarily concerned with self-expression.

The second week brought a significant shift in our line of inquiry: we started teasing out the disciplinary and institutional divisions that animate our various stations and exploring their historical contexts. The framework for this conversation came from Lisa’s observation that theological differences cannot exclusively account for the variety (or lack of variety) of ways that churches of various traditions employ art, and that a social anthropological approach is needed to compliment the theological approach. I found this refreshing because it moved us outside the walls of the church – indeed, one my few disappointments from the seminar was that, despite a nominal commitment to art outside sacred spaces, our conversations tended to always come back to the church proper. Perhaps this is one reason why I found myself feeling constrained by the idea of liturgy; even though we attempted to expand our notion of the word, I never got a sense that those broader construals were a priority in the discussion.

It is somewhat ironic, then, that the day devoted to discussing Environment and Art in Catholic Worship provided the climax of the seminar for me. The document provided a launching point for us to discuss the idea of the “appropriateness” of artwork as determined by the liturgy. For John, the conditions of ‘answerability’ or ‘accountability’ were very important here. He suggested the need to “cultivate an artistic environment where artists in all churches submit their artistic work to the church community’s liturgical work.” He acknowledged that artists operating in the individualist mode may feel constrained by this, and that in response he felt the church needed to open up the “liturgical relevance of other spaces.” This provided an opportunity for me to express that, as an artist, the sense of being constrained by the liturgy is not grounded in a resistance to functionality (or in the defense of my individual creative expression, for that matter), but rather in a desire to embrace functionality more broadly than the liturgy. Brent and I both articulated our desire to create work that is formative, sophisticated, and faith informed, even if it is not necessarily appropriate for a sacred space or specific liturgical purpose.

The idea of endowing work outside the church with spiritual significance is powerful to me, and maps clearly onto our discussions about Christian involvement in the arts. (In fact, this seems like the most promising area of future work for me that could come from this seminar.) I teach media production to students who will go on to a wide variety of careers. The individualistic fixation on self-expression is indeed counterproductive – very few of them will go on to earn a living as independent filmmakers. But equally restrictive, I think, is the notion that their work should be limited to the church or para-church organizations. And this is a binary they are faced with. What is missing, it seems to me, is theological engagement with secular work in the arts, broadly construed. I want to emphasize that I do see liturgy as a helpful lens through which to observe our present situation, and that I need to continue to think more about its broader implications. For the moment, however, as I struggle to understand it beyond the walls of the church, it feels like a retreat – like a cloistering of our creative abilities.

And hence, for me, the importance of Leah’s presentations on community art. Leah described community art as extremely pragmatic – an interesting notion to me because I had always thought of it as being rather idealistic. For Leah though, arts are the “most actual.” You get people to actually DO something together. In one sense it is “a rehearsal for society-making.” I was reminded of Charles Taylor’s distinction between language as descriptive vs. language as constitutive. Throughout the entire seminar I had been very much in a descriptive mode, trying to analyze, make distinctions, solve problems. But for the last two days of the seminar I was forced to depart from that mode. I was reminded that, as a process – regardless of the result – art-making is necessary part of our existence as humans, as spiritual beings.

Such a brief reflection on these three weeks seems wholly inadequate. In true Protestant form I have focused on the arguments that proceeded from our conversations rather than the experiences we enjoyed together. I have also fore-fronted conflict, which, while critical for conveying the arc of events, was not the defining characteristic of the Summer Seminar. Our excursions to cathedrals and monasteries, the many side conversations, often over meals or on walks in the countryside, and the delightful experiences marking our time together, the friendships formed with like-minded colleagues at other institutions: these things I will treasure, and hope to continue for many years into the future. Indeed, for me the dialogue across the Protestant-Catholic divide was one of the richest and most fruitful aspects of the seminar.

LAURA SMIT (theologian, CALVIN COLLEGE): MARY & MARTHA IN MONASTERY SAN MARCO

This fresco is especially intimate because of the way that the cell itself has been extended to include Mary and Martha within the friar’s own living space.

Luke 10:38-42:
Now as [Jesus and his disciples] went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

The Dominican monastery of San Marco in Florence began as a daughter house of the first Dominican community established in Florence at what is now called monastery Santa Maria Novella. By the 1418, Monastery San Marco had developed a reputation for laxity in its discipline. In 1437, Cosimo de Medici – in whose neighborhood San Marco was located – was instrumental in having the dwindling community at San Marco replaced with a group of zealous friars brought down the hill from a Reformed Dominican house in Fiesole. Among these transferred brothers was the artistically trained friar now known as Fra Angelico.

Fra Angelico, together with his team of assistants, was given the responsibility for communicating a Dominican way of life in frescoes throughout the building, including the individual cells where Dominican friars not only slept but engaged in their daily study of scripture and theology and sacred tradition. These cell frescoes were designed to contribute to the spiritual formation of the mature brother or novice or lay brother assigned to that cell. A century later in his collection of Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Giorgio Vasari writes of Fra Angelico:

He might have been rich, but to this he gave no thought; nay, he used to say that true riches consist only in being content with little. He might have ruled many, but he would not, saying that it was less fatiguing and less misleading to obey others. …. He was most kindly and temperate; and he lived chastely and withdrew himself from the snares of the world, being wont very often to say that he who pursued such an art had need of quiet and of a life free from cares, and that he whose work is connected with Christ must ever live with Christ.

Fra Angelico considered his own work to be connected with Christ, and he was intimately involved in planning the theological significance of his paintings, though no doubt in consultation with the other leaders of the community. The frescoes that Fra Angelico painted in the brothers’ cells of San Marco encouraged each brother “ever to live with Christ.”

The sisters Mary and Martha figure prominently as witnesses to the Piercing of Christ’s Side in one fresco (in cell 42, according to the numbering used in modern guides). But the fresco I wish to discuss depicts Jesus’s agonized prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane (in cell 34).

The left side of the fresco illustrates with careful detail the scene of Jesus with his closest disciples – Peter, James, and John. He has asked them to watch with him a little while, but they have all fallen asleep. The eyes of Jesus are fixed on the angel who is bringing him a cup; this is the cup that Jesus has asked might be taken from him. Fra Angelico has portrayed it as a communion chalice. As Luke recounts the episode, “Jesus knelt down and prayed, ‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done.’ Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength.” By placing the cup of suffering in the hand of the strengthening angel, then portraying the angel as pointing insistently at the chalice, the fresco suggests that the gift of strength will come through the experience of suffering.

But it is the right side of the fresco that is surprising. Fra Angelico has placed Mary and Martha in a house next to the scene unfolding in the Garden. We know these women are Mary and Martha because their names are inscribed in their haloes. Nothing in the gospel account links Lazarus’s sisters with this moment in the garden. In the fresco the sharp line of the wall of the house divides the scene into two distinct halves. In this picture, Mary and Martha are with Jesus in spirit while absent from him in the flesh. The little window in the separating wall suggests the link between them. They are doing what his male disciples have failed to do: they are keeping attentive watch with Jesus.

Martha is in prayer, her hands in the same position as those of Jesus in the opposite corner of the picture. Her prayer is joined with his prayer. Mary and Martha have already received strength through suffering in the experience of the death and miraculous resurrection of their brother. Now they are watching over Jesus, our elder brother, as he begins this same journey, though the death he faces contains the penalty for sin, and the new life he will win is a permanent and glorified life.

After her brother’s death, Martha’s address to Jesus was very similar to Jesus’ prayer here in the garden of Gethsemane. The gospel of John tells the story this way:

When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” (John 11:20-27)

Martha begins by affirming her confidence that even now Jesus could take this cup from her, that even now God would give him whatever he asked, but her faith in Jesus is not contingent on his willingness to raise her brother. She confesses that He is the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world. And she knows that even if she must drink this cup of sorry now, she and her siblings may have confidence in the promise of the resurrection on the last day.

It is remarkable that Fra Angelico chooses to present Martha as a paradigm of prayer and contemplation rather than as a symbol of the active life. In this fresco he imagines for us a progression in Martha’s life from the distraction of her domestic busy-ness, through the death and rebirth of her brother, to this moment of anguish shared with her Savior. She is now joined with Mary in choosing the better part. In the subsequent fresco of the Piercing of Christ’s Side, Martha will be shown joining Mary literally at Jesus’ feet, this time as he hangs on the cross in death.

Martha is gazing intently not at an angel but at Mary. It is Mary who has been God’s messenger, or angel, to her, showing her the one thing that is needful. Like Martha, Mary is also watching with her Savior; she has opened the Scriptures, which like him are given as bread from heaven. She is pointing insistently at the book, just as the angel is pointing insistently at the chalice. After his resurrection, Jesus met two disciples on the road to Emmaus and taught them from the Scriptures. Luke says: “Then he said to them, ‘Oh how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” In this fresco, Mary also points to the Scriptures as the interpretive key to Jesus’ experience of agony.

This fresco is especially intimate because of the way that the cell itself has been extended to include Mary and Martha within the friar’s own living space. The curved arches in the room in which Mary and Martha sit echo the curved arches in the simple cells of the monastery. The single window linking their room with the garden echoes the single window in each cell. The walls are the same color and textured in the same way. The brother in this cell is to understand himself as watching alongside Mary and Martha. They are exemplars of the contemplative life that he is called to live, a life of both study and prayer. It is a life of union with Christ.

The brother in this cell is also faced with the warning of the sleeping disciples in the garden. Surely the friar knows this temptation. The rhythm of the hours of prayer interrupts his sleep every night; he never has what we would consider a full night's sleep. But as a friar he is called to the contemplative way. This fresco daily calls him to stay awake and watch with Jesus.

The life of prayer also interrupts his domestic work. In a community of all men, the brothers are responsible for all the activity of cleaning and cooking, of offering hospitality to travelers, care to the sick, and aid to the indigent. The brother in this cell knows the ever-present temptation to distraction that once snared Martha. The domestic work must be done, but his life is meant to be ordered around prayer and contemplation, with those other duties fitted in around his primary work of life with God. Surely the friar knew the temptation, even as we know the temptation, of reversing this pattern, of allowing the busy-ness of our many tasks to control the rhythm of our day and then trying to fit in times of prayer and contemplative reading of Scripture around those tasks. The friar must keep his priorities in order. This fresco daily says to him, “You are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.”

Martha is the only figure in this image who looks out of the frame into the life of the friar living in this cell. Her focused gaze and prayer posture remind him: “You have chosen the better part; it will not be taken from you.” The better part is to be where Christ is, doing what Christ is doing, and listening to what Christ is teaching. As Fra Angelico said, “he whose work is connected with Christ must ever live with Christ.”