National Gallery Youth Trip

Tips to View Art
Gravitate towards what you like.
What moves you?
What is the artist trying to say?
Find out something about the artist or the time or the location.
Take time.

The Transcendentals
The Transcendentals are those characteristics of the natural world where we see God and the order he created most clearly reflected. Christian philosophers often discuss three: beauty, truth, and goodness.

We cannot see the sun at night—we only see its light reflected in the moon. In the same way, the transcendentals reflect the light of god into our word.

“These transcendentals lead us to God. When we question something to find truth, we are eventually led to the ultimate Truth, Christ himself, who is truth incarnate. When we look for the goodness of something, we look to the fidelity and flourishing of its nature; how God designed it to be. Beauty is the perfection, wholeness, unity, and proportionality of something. All of these lead us to a deeper understanding of creation, of God, and of ourselves, and are, therefore, ideal for discussion…” (Missing the attribution on this. Probably God is Beauty by Karol Wojtyla.)

Beauty
What is beauty?

Merriam-Webster’s first definition is, “the quality or group of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or the mind.” Merriam adds, “the quality of being physically attractive.” (We knew that one.) And, “an excellent or appealing quality.”

The beautiful is that which having been seen, pleases. —Thomas Aquinas

At the gallery, when you see depictions of perfect beauty. What were those artists searching for?

Can we see God through beauty? Is there a quality of God’s character that is reflected in the beauty we see?

And St. Augustine issues this challenge: Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky…question all these realities. All respond, "See, we are beautiful." Their beauty is a profession. These beauties are subject to change. Who made them if not the Beautiful One who is not subject to change?
St. Augustine, Sermo 241, 2: PL 38, 1134

As St. Paul says of the Gentiles: For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.
Romans 1:19-20

God Is Beauty
What if ultimate beauty is not in a depiction of a female form, but in the incarnation. The fact that God broke through time and space and make Himself known.

The incarnation. God taking on flesh. One definition could be making visible the invisible.

Plato was prescient in his understanding about how a single beauty could lead us to ultimate beauty. Here are his steps:

Plato’s progression of beauty:
—A particular beautiful body.
—All beautiful bodies.
—Beautiful souls.
—Beautiful laws and institutions.
—The beauty of knowledge.
—Beauty itself — that is, the Form of the Beautiful.

…both the body and art serve the same purpose: that of “making visible what is invisible, the spiritual and the divine.”
—from God is Beauty

On the walls of this museum, the most perfect beauty is not found in the depiction of a woman. It is found in Jesus hanging on the cross.

Assigned Viewing
Notes below in italics are from the NGA website.

Calvary, Master of the Death of Saint Nicholas of Münster
West Building, Main Floor - Gallery 35A

Much of the story of the crucifixion is compressed into one scene. What parts of the story do you see here?

About a dozen men and women gather around three men hanging from wooden crosses, all against a deep landscape beneath a shiny gold sky in this horizontal painting. All the people we can see have pale or tanned skin. The men on the crosses wear only white loincloths, and a gold halo encircles the head of the man in the middle, Jesus. Jesus hangs with his hands and feet nailed to the cross, and a man on the ground has pierced his right side with a lance. Blood drips down his face from a ring of thorns.

The Raising of the Cross, Master of the Starck Triptych
West Building, Main Floor - Gallery 35A

Opening the triptych reveals one of the earliest depictions of the Raising of the Cross, a subject that began to appear in northern Europe in the late fifteenth century. An account of the attachment of Christ's body to the cross and its elevation does not occur in the Gospel narratives. Rather, it grew out of late medieval piety, in particular, the religious movement known as the Devotio Moderna (Modern Devotion), which amplified the narrative of Christ's Passion and urged its followers to empathize with Christ's pain and suffering.

The Small Crucifixion, Matthias Grünewald
West Building, Main Floor - Gallery 35A

In order to communicate this mystical belief, Grünewald resorted to a mixture of ghastly realism and coloristic expressiveness. Silhouetted against a greenish–blue sky and illuminated by an undefined light source, Christ's emaciated frame sags limply on the cross. His twisted feet and hands, crown of thorns, agonized expression, and ragged loincloth convey the terrible physical and emotional suffering he has endured. This abject mood is intensified by the anguished expressions and demonstrative gestures of John the Evangelist, the Virgin Mary, and the kneeling Mary Magdalene.

Grünewald's dissonant, eerie colors were also rooted in biblical fact. The murky sky, for instance, corresponds to Saint Luke's description of "a darkness over all the earth" at the time of the crucifixion. Grünewald, who himself witnessed a full eclipse in 1502, has re–created here the dark and rich tonalities associated with such natural phenomena.

Possible Viewing

Daniel in the Lions' Den, Sir Peter Paul Rubens
West Building, Main Floor - Gallery 45

The Old Testament recounts how the Persian king Darius I "The Great" (550–486 BC) condemned the devout and steadfast Daniel to spend the night in a lions' den for worshipping God rather than him. The following morning, after the stone sealing the entrance was rolled away, the astonished Persians saw Daniel, very much alive, giving thanks to God for keeping him safe overnight: "Then said Daniel unto the king, O king, live for ever. My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths, that they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found in me; and also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt." (Daniel 6:21–22) For theologians, Daniel's miraculous survival in the cave symbolized the resurrection of Christ from his tomb, and the promise of God's protection to those of unwavering faith.

Woman Holding a Balance, Johannes Vermeer
West Building, Main Floor - Gallery 50

The visual juxtaposition of the woman and the Last Judgment is reinforced by thematic parallels: to judge is to weigh. This scene has religious implications that seem related to Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s instructions, in his Spiritual Exercises, that the faithful, prior to meditating, first examine their conscience and weigh their sins as if facing Judgment Day. Only such introspection could lead to virtuous choices along the path of life. Woman Holding a Balance thus allegorically urges us to conduct our lives with temperance and moderation. The woman is poised between the earthly treasures of gold and pearls and a visual reminder of the eternal consequences of her actions.

The Descent from the Cross, Rembrandt Workshop
West Building, Main Floor - Gallery 48

This Descent from the Cross, probably painted by a gifted member of Rembrandt’s workshop, evokes reverence. Light from the torch held by the man on the ladder is concentrated on only two major areas of activity: the aged Joseph of Arimathea who gently helps to lower Christ's body, and the swooning figure of the Virgin Mary. Joseph seems to present Christ to the viewer while the figures below quietly prepare to receive the body. Mary’s pale face mirrors the deathly white of her son’s body.

The Pistoia Crucifix, Pietro Tacca
West Building, Ground Floor - Gallery 10

This bronze has been called the most beautiful of many crucifixes ascribed to Pietro Tacca, including examples at the royal monastery of the Escorial in Spain and at the cathedrals of Prato and Pisa. Tacca, son of a marble merchant from Carrara, mastered bronze in Florence as a principal assistant to Giovanni Bologna, whom he succeeded in 1609 as sculptor to the Grand Duke. Although the twisting pose reflects the elegance of the celebrated older master, Tacca's personal pursuit of realism and pathos is revealed in the gaunt figure with protruding bones and also in flesh pushed up by nails, bulging closed eyes, and an aggressively spiky crown of thorns.

The Stations of the Cross, Barnett Newman
East Building, Tower - Gallery 615B

The Stations of the Cross developed as a series of prayers patterned after early Christian pilgrimages. Images and texts representing the events of the day of Jesus’ crucifixion offered opportunities to meditate on the suffering and sacrifice of Christ. The stations are: (1) Jesus is condemned to death, (2) he is made to bear his cross, (3) he falls the first time, (4) he meets his mother, (5) Simon of Cyrene is made to bear the cross, (6) Veronica wipes Jesus’ face, (7) he falls the second time, (8) the women of Jerusalem weep over Jesus, (9) he falls the third time, (10) he is stripped of his garments, (11) he is nailed to the cross, (12) he dies on the cross, (13) he is taken down from the cross, and (14) he is placed in the sepulchre.

About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli,lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). —Matthew 27:46

See also, Psalm 22.

Traditional stations of the cross.

Lunch Discussion

• Any of the above topics.

• What was your favorite artwork with a Biblical theme? Be prepared to talk about this at lunch.

• What was the story?

• Why did it move you?

• Did the art help the story come alive?

• Would you have depicted the story differently

• What does INRI mean?

• Do you wonder about the artist? Pick one piece art that moves you. Research a little bit about that artist’s life and report back to the group. Tell the story of the artist. Van Gogh? There is an artist behind every painting who made the art at a very high price. What about the artist behind creation? What if we view creation at a superficial level—without ever meeting the artist?

Finally
Beauty needs truth and goodness. Discuss. Or does one lead to the other?
Beauty > Goodness > Truth.

Schedule
8:45 meet
9:00 depart Berryville
10:30 arrive at NGA, opening conversation, view first several paintings together then split up
12:15 lunch in the cafeteria, discussion of God, beauty, art
2:30 coffee
3:00 depart museum
4:30 arrive at home