SHEEN TALKS: ELIZABETH LEV - How Catholic Art Saved the Faith

dr. Elizabeth Lev is an art historian and an author living in Rome where she offers tours of the eternal city's treasures and is on the teaching staff at the Pontifical University of the angelicum as well as Christendom College she is the author of three books including the book tonight how Catholic art saved the faith which is available for purchase and signing after tonight's event and has published articles in numerous publications including first things and inside the Vatican magazine she's travelled the world speaking on art has presented a TED talk on the Sistine Chapel and has appeared on many TV and radio programs including ABC's Nightline and The Today Show with all that on her plate she took time out of her busy schedule here in New York she's been doing tours at the Met and speaking to groups about art so we're just so deeply grateful that she carved out a little time to be with us tonight without further ado it is my great privilege to welcome dr. Elizabeth love Wow well thank you so much for coming out and I think it's Sunday I've been traveling so much I don't really know what day it is anymore and I am really kind of pleased to be discussing this book again it it's a project that actually was my graduate subject I went to University of Bologna for my my graduate degree and at the University of Bologna you don't get to choose your thesis subject they tell you and and so I was told I was going to be doing this little obscure bolognese group that worked on a counter-reformation Church in Rome and I thought to myself well lucky me the American in Bologna and I had no idea how incredibly helpful those studies would end up being it seemed kind of like just you know chugging through something to get a piece of paper and it ended up being something that really gave me a way to navigate and understand many things about the contemporary church actually and I started teaching Baroque art I've been teaching it for about 20 years and began to realize that the Baroque and the fun of Bernini is actually very very very closely connected to the art of the counter-reformation and that the art these beautiful things that people see in Rome the things you do kind of between one gelato and another they are actually meant to teach us in a very very special way so I guess what I'm getting at is as we rolled into 1982 2017 it began to occur to me that the situation in the Catholic Church looked an awful lot like it did back in 1517 we're gearing up to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation and just like 500 years ago people are yelling at each other and people saying oh you're not this and you're not that and lots and lots and lots of arguments and what does the church teach and a lot of confusion about what the church taught and all of a sudden I realized that wait a minute I actually know what they did last time this happened so let's just start from the very first premise I always think it's kind of an interesting way to begin this story is to find out that the way that sorry okay I'm going to fight with the technology the whole way through so don't this is par for the course I think some of you have actually away I've got a Stu former student in here will tell you that my life at the Angelika was a constant fight with the with the slide show because after all the motto of the angelicum is the matter of the vatican is yesterday's technology tomorrow so the so this is kind of an interesting way of thinking about things you know this this whole how do we describe a Christian how does Jesus tell us we're supposed to be recognized by the way we love one another and yet 15 17 rolls around and that's not what this is looking like we start out with of course the famous theis 95 theses that were hammered up on the cathedral door in Wittenberg by Martin Luther I don't think he had any idea of the the can of worms or the Pandora's box he was actually opening but the next thing you know we have starting with Martin Luther we move on to Calvin we have these sort of one thing after another the church is fragmented in two it's fragmenting in three it's fragmenting in four lots and lots and lots of different teachings so you know one person says this another person says this another person that says how are you supposed to navigate all that and what is worse to add the bag to the problem is a brand new technological invention and that new in engine is the printing press it is impossible to understate how much the printing press changed things because when you think about it by the time it gets to be about 15 30 15 40 150 million documents are circulating all around Europe every year and a great many of them have to do with religion and so there you are you know reading one piece reading another piece bringing another Karthik well doesn't it sound a bit like today lots and lots and lots of information all coming in from different directions and we have lives we have to get up in the morning we got to get the kids to school we got to get our stuff - how are we gonna filter through all this information and so this happens in the mid 16th century people are bombarded with information there are tons and tons and tons of different articles different beliefs different systems that are being put forward and then to make matters worse it turns out the Protestants are really good at writing clickbait titles right I mean they write the best stuff and so like the titles how are you not gonna pick up and read a pamphlet that's titled on the institution if the papacy founded by the devil okay I'd probably click right so it sounded so it's so catchy and every time the Catholics are trying to respond it gets to be a kind of a long-winded explanation of dum de dum de dum de dum de dum and so every time the Catholics have to respond to a question of doctrine or dogma the precision that is required when you're writing about theology makes the answer nowhere near as much fun as the pamphlet and so the church needs to find some solutions in order to be able to create a conversation so what starts happening is people be people started using stronger and stronger language and so we find these are actual quotes by the way we find this sort of constant name-calling that goes back and forth and back and forth and so these are these terms that people are using to each other so you start out with a very kind of violent and hostile language and then from there it actually moves on to violence so we have the same mass st. Bartholomew's made a massacre of the Huguenots followed by the Mara actually it's the martyrdom of the girl the gorica martyrs are first and then the mattify st. Bartholomew's Day Massacre is second but you have Catholics killing Protestants Protestants killing Catholics I mean but when is this ever going to end and so trying to re-establish a way to communicate is is something that the gist it's imperative for the church trying to communicate in a way that people will be able to understand and more importantly own Catholic doctrine and dogma is something that they're really looking for it how do we do that because you can't really ask a busy farmer could you please read this giant treatise by Robert Bellarmine and that way you can explain to your friends why the real presence is in the sacrament you need to feel like you own it in some other way and so the church actually does have ways of doing this we have it in art but the church had actually distanced itself from art there had been a number of issues that happened in the mid 16th century like a lot of naked figures in inappropriate places and the church was beginning to think maybe maybe maybe we should just take a step back from patronizing art but as the situation grew more and more and more serious the church realized it is time for us to take the art question in hand and so the Council of Trent which went on for 25 different sessions in the final session I always like to point this out because sometimes art historians we get a little full of ourselves and we think like somehow we are the be-all end-all of the existence of the Catholic Church so this is the moment where sort of I required by humility to tell you that the Council of Trent which is this extended council over 20 years in which the Church Fathers discuss all the questions that are pertinent of the church after the Protestant Reformation the question of art took place during the 25th and final session December 4th of 1563 after they had finished talking about Saints relics and probably who was gonna buy the coffee at midday they finally said oh yeah what else who oh let's talk about art but the fact of the matter is they did talk about I'm just happy that they talked about it they did talk about it and they decided that the church would continue to actively patronize art they would try to help artists understand that the art to be produced for churches would need to be clear you need to understand what's happening in the picture it's not about how clever the artist is and he can't figure out who Saint Stephen is and the our time of saying Steven it has to be accurate you can't go making up stories from the Bible because you think it would cool if it looked that way and most importantly and yet most different in the most difficult part it has to stimulate towards piety and I get the feeling there probably a lot of artists in this room or people who hang around with artists and just I'm just wondering if I give you a piece of paper and a pencil and say okay could you uh stimulate me towards piety how are you gonna do that so it's gonna take a generation for the artist to really begin to figure out how exactly to carry this out but they will and they will find a way to use art to help people work together so think about it this way when we start arguing about an idea we tend to be looking at each other and we argue in our voices get louder when we start TV we start to run out of arguments and start to use more and more sort of questionable accusations whereas what happens when we look at a work of art right we all stand together and we all look at something beautiful art gives us the opportunity of standing side-by-side focused on something that is outside of ourselves and something that we can learn from so it's a really fundamental and extremely important thing about art art will be in art will be mmm called into service on the part of the church to deal with the three most pressing problems that the church has and this is what I was particularly interested in in the book number one is the problem of sacraments number two is the problem of intercession and number three is the problem of cooperation in salvation which is problematic to explain that let alone paint and so for the remaining time where this little talk is going to be I'm gonna take you through three of those sections and I'm gonna explain to I'm gonna show you works of art that perhaps are very famous very well known to you actually I'm taking one of my favorite artists Caravaggio who's on paper maybe not the person that you would be choosing to be the face of the counter-reformation but I'm going to be looking at three works of art that tackle these three questions and really get a sense of how art really was in the service of the church to reinforce the faith teach the faithful all the while so successfully that people stand in line four hundred years later in order to go see these works of art so this was a tremendously winning proposition that they put together so let's start with the sacraments and I'm gonna start with you obviously there are seven but we're gonna deal with the one that was the most under fire and that is the that was really a sacrament of the Eucharist and the sacrament of penance we're gonna be looking at the question of the Eucharist and of course in the midst of the denials of the real presence in the Eucharist and this idea of yeah why on earth should I believe that there is the body and blood of Christ and the Eucharist it's probably just a symbol all these different proliferation of teachings and then when you try to get a Catholic you tried to get a Catholic to explain well what does that mean you have a lot of well you know well we we just believe it right so to order to own this in order to feel much closer to the idea of the body of Christ who do they call in but none other than Caravaggio and I do want to point out Caravaggio is hands-down the absolute worst person on paper to be hired for the counter-reformation I mean every day that guy had lived during the Renaissance I mean let's just say he had not been born in 1571 but had been born and oh I don't know 1500 he never would have had a career he couldn't draw he couldn't fresco he can't do half the stuff that Raphael Michelangelo can do so to begin with just for his sheer technical skills had he been born in the Renaissance that guy would have been making pizza until the day he died but the fact of the matter is he was born in this perfect moment when the church is kind of looking around looking for someone they can help us get a new idea of what we're gonna do or how we're gonna we need new people new blood new ideas Caravaggio is perfect Caravaggio is perfect because of the fact that he's a very edgy restless character and his art becomes captivating for this reason he's also not exactly a very good poster child because his life is known to us through police records of which there were no less than 40 most of which are for aggression so I understand that one might be looking at this guy going mmm sure we want him representing the church and yet what a successful gamble that was this particular painting which I personally consider his most successful religious work was commissioned by the greatest artistic Gamblers there were the orator Ian Order founded by Philip Neri had a great sense of finding artists had a really good eye for finding artists that could catch the attention of the faithful so Caravaggio this guy in and out of jail constantly in trouble gets hired by the order that began the custom of the 40 hours devotion so the moving of the Blessed Sacrament for 40 hours of Duke eristic adoration from place to place to place so that by 1600 the the Blessed Sacrament was moved from all the churches and venerated or adored all during all during the calendar year and this is the order that began it and so he gets hired to work in their mother church the Quezon wha-wha Caravaggio and he's supposed to make an altarpiece which is called the entombment and he produces this work which all of the people who all the other artists who are sitting there scratching their heads going how did Caravaggio get this job the very first thing they're gonna be asking themselves is well first of all that it's really realistic it's a little bit too realistic doesn't this guy know about Photoshop I mean how come the complaint of course is that people look a little bit too real so starting with the first issue that Mary does not look like a weather you have the big old guy in the corner whose elbow is sticking out somewhat abruptly with that big kind of lump on the back of his neck Mary does not look like the mother the 20 year-old mother of a 33 year old man as she does in the Pieta Jesus looks suspiciously green and definitely dead and over here his feet are definitely dirty and so these little polishing things that artists are supposed to do this kind of Photoshop Caravaggio doesn't do that said there's really nothing else that's realistic in this painting I think it's fairly safe to say that this painting I don't think you can actually put a body in the ground with people arranged in this where are they like where is this taking place they're like either like downstairs in the black box theater all sort of against the wall there is no logic or order to the progression of these figures they're just they're all placed up against the front of the glass like in our famous 64 busts in in Rome so there's really nothing realistic in the positioning there's nothing realistic in the way the bodies work together and there is certainly nothing realistic in the light I mean come on is it morning is it afternoon is it evening did Caravaggio have a time machine and go to a Hollywood studio and pick up one of those spotlights where is that light coming from he is intentionally mixing these realistic elements that kind of are jarring li gritty with something that is obviously evidently not of this world and the brilliance of the work the real brilliance of the work is in its composition so you see how you have the two the the light that Caravaggio uses which comes from an unseen supernatural source you see how it hits the face of Mary Magdalene who's standing over in the corner with this open mouths expression in her hand raised your eye will go straight to her because she's like a beacon she captures that light full in the face but notice how the composition works your eye starts to move downwards instead of moving up if you ever notice in paintings your eye usually moves up but Caravaggio makes sure I move down you pass from Mary Magdalene the two bent heads of the two Mary's the body of John the body of Nicodemus the body of Jesus and it ends with that hand of Jesus dangling down towards the viewer space where you have the stone piece that is jutting out into your space now it is very evident where Caravaggio got the idea of that body of Jesus this is like this is art history 101 he's been looking at the Pieta and yes he's very interested in that body of Jesus that's hovering over the altar but he does something that's a little bit more than what Michelangelo would have done if you notice underneath the feet underneath that slab of stones you see there's a big old empty spot there now this will be hard for some of you to believe but once upon we had rules in painting and rule number one about painting you got to complete your composition if you don't know what to put in that space down below there you probably shouldn't be painting you should probably be laying bricks someplace and yet Caravaggio not only left a big huge hole you know what he did he's Jesus point to it it's literally like hey did you notice I left a big hole in the painting now I would be the first one to tell you that doesn't make any sense if you look at that painting where it is today it's on the wall of the Vatican Museums it sits there with a bunch of other paintings and of course the big old blank space and the painting doesn't make sense but if you put it back into its original placement the original placement was actually absurd a single place what was above an altar so I've sort of reconstruct an altarpiece for you you have the original placement if the painting underneath it you would have had the altar and what are you supposed to have happening underneath the altar you're supposed to have the priests celebrating the mass now let's imagine the moment that the priest lifts the hosts a consecration and says those words this is my potty that will be given up for you that big space is completed by the priest raising the host just as the body of Jesus comes down into the tomb it's very very effective and not only is it a very effective but the fact that that goal that hole stands there gaping it gives a sense of urgency a kind of a you have to step up and do something Caravaggio is not content just to have the story come down into its space he leaves this open space as if to say to the viewer if you do not participate in this there's really no point to this at all and so this is one of the ways very powerful very compelling very engaging to the viewer that the church found a way to take this troublesome and troubled artists and have them produce a work of art that would really be able to drive home yes indeed this is the body of Christ so moving from here the next problem that they will face is the problem of intercession and the problem of intercession and the role that Saints play in the lives of the faithful again very challenged by many of the Protestant denominations who are wondering about you know how can it be this isn't mentioned in the Bible why would I bother praying to Saint Sebastian when I can just talk to the big guy directly and there are a lot of different implications that are going to be important about this but the one that as a Roman who's been away from Rome from for days so I'm getting a little roam sick as it were this is the one that I think is perhaps the most pertinent for us at the moment the real issue they have one of the greatest concerns has to do with the problem of Peter the role of st. Peter the role of st. Peter as the first Bishop of Rome ergo the first Pope ergo the the the beginning of the lineages of the papacy so basically many of the Protestants start asking the question of who died and made you Pope and the answer to that is Peter now with Lucas Cranach the elder in some of these some of these some of these printed objects there was a lot of mockery of Peters and successors there's a really one of the really very clever things the Protestants do is they write these really funny pops builders that first one I showed you had some rather questionable imagery of a bunch of people showing their backsides to the Pope in this particular case you have what is known as the Christ and Anti Christ series where you'll have one scene in which Jesus is doing something holy and the other scene where the Pope is doing exactly the opposite so there's a big there's sort of a cottage industry in disrespectful imagery towards the papacy and the church is concerned about this because obviously it denigrates Peter and the role of the successor of st. Peter and as it just so happens in Rome Peter has never ever has never just been only Peter Peter has always been paired with Paul and I'll get back to that in a second because the first thing I want you to see is this church that that was that was particularly chosen in order to focus the attention of the Rhian frigg's the attention of the underscoring of the importance of st. Peter and st. Paul that scene you see in front of you is what's called piazza del popolo those of you who have been to Rome you know Piazza del Popolo Piazza del Popolo is the northern gate of Rome so what you need to sort of topographically understand is the gate on left side of the painting 80% of the visitors who are coming to Rome that's your first view of the city you cross at that gate you walk in you've been walking for 500 miles you are so incredibly grateful to finally be here what's the first thing you want to do you want to go to a church fall on the ground and say oh thank you God for getting me here in one piece and so that church immediately to the left Santa Maria del Popolo is going to get if 80% of the visitors are coming through that gate then 80% of those visitors are gonna go look at that first first impact into the city of Rome so they're really interested in making church as you're making sure that church has some very compelling very instructive art to add to it that is an Augustinian Church right so what order did Martin Luther belong to Augustinian and where did he preach Santa Maria del Popolo so they've got a lot of explaining to do and so basically the santa maria del popolo gets extra special attention from really the Pope himself and so the issue again there's the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo and the issue in the issue at hand here has to do with who are Peter and Paul to the Romans we see them as twins so in Rome every year on June 29th we have a feast day it's the feast day of Peter and Paul what are we celebrating the day that Peter and Paul died we believe in Rome the Peter and Paul believed it's a tradition that goes back to this time of saint jerome we believe peter and paul died on the same day now if they died on the same day that means of course that they were born in heaven on the same day and if they were born on the same day i think that makes them what twins and since our city was founded by Romulus and Remus the picture on the lid statue on the left should be familiar to everyone that's our famous Romulus and Remus and the she-wolf the city was founded by two twins and then the gold glass the fourth century object the pilgrims would bid would but would bring back have the Peter and Paul laid out in gold sharing the same martyr crown because they are the twin refound errs of Rome and as a matter of fact early Christian aren't used to always Christian art paired right up into the Reformation we always paired the death of Peter and the death of Paul on the right hand side you see the altarpiece painted by Giotto that stood on Peters tomb from 1320 to 1550 and what's on the Left Etha Peter death and death of Paul the you if you write below it was the actual tomb of Peter and it had a little wooden icon which you could lift so you could touch the dirt of st. Peter's tomb the image on the left is the icon in which you see Peter and Paul bracing each other two brothers indivisible who love each other and who care for each other that's what the church that's how the church always saw Peter and Paul the Protestant Reformation separates the twins the Protestants get very interested in Paul the Catholics can't wait to finish building st. Peter's and so it kind of sets this sort of strange dichotomy between the two and so already in 1540 1550 the Pope starts thinking you know what we got to get this Peter and Paul thing back on track and so Pope Paul the third back in 1545 hired the most famous artist in the world Michelangelo to explore a new iconography where you would see the death of st. Peter and the conversion of Saul so this is a nice way to hint towards the Protestants you like Paul so much remember that he converted to so they put the two side-by-side Michelangelo does the death of st. Peter crucified and this enormous painting would occupy basically this good chunk actually most of that wall it's in a very very small private chapel which is what they used from time to time for the Conclave inside the Vatican Peter is surrounded by this incredible crew of people he's lying on the cross and you see how he lifts his head and looks outwards that was a very specific message always for the man who went into the Conclave and came out as Pope because after he was elected and they put on his white robe for the first time and he walked out Peter watches him from the altar all the way out the door as a little reminder oh by the way this is the job description and then on the other side you see st. Paul who's captured at the moment of his conversion which Michelangelo of course does in his own inimitable way there are about 30 people at the scene of course Saul is lying on the ground he's covering his eyes he's represented as an older man Michelangelo was older he's working for an older patron they're sort of thinking in terms of an older saw and Jesus is terrific he said him in extreme sports Jesus you see him up at the top there he's doing like this really cool kind of upside down and a drop and he sends down this beam of light where everything else explodes from that space so this has already been done once before and then they'll do it again in 1600 which is a Jubilee year which means lots and lots and lots of people will be coming in that northern gate the Pope himself had his right-hand man T Barry ot Ossie take a chapel endow a chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo it's a transept chapel it's a very very important chapel and Taurasi hired first and foremost as the first artist of the of the chapel he hired Annie belay kurachi who was the greatest living artist at the time so the altarpiece in the front of the chapel was gonna go to the man who was incredibly famous the Bolognese an evil a Karachi had founded a school he paints this assumption of the Virgin which of course is designed to drive the Protestants crazy because it's a Marian doctrine and you have Mary being assumed bodily into heaven she's not some little light sylph like an ectoplasmic up towards heaven she's a big girl with like the angels lifting and see the Rockettes working as they're bringing Mary upwards these huge figures of Peter and Paul in these attitudes of devotion Peter tilts towards the viewer Paul leans backwards his foot extends over the altar paul was good enough to have a pedicure before he showed up for the Assumption if you take a look at that beautifully arranged foot the collars are lovely everything is cheery after all we're looking at a glorious mystery and the side walls went to Caravaggio who after his first work in sun luigi de franchisee in six 900 his second work is gonna be in Santa Maria del Popolo he's got to compete with the most famous living artist and he's got to compete with the legacy of the most famous not living artist it is a really tough Commission and Caravaggio comes in that brash swaggering painter that he was and he does things absolutely opposite of what everybody else had done before so we're looking at the death of st. Peter and the death of and the conversion of salt in a way that Michelangelo had been sitting there scratching his head saying I I don't understand Millennials and on the left hand side we have so we have left hand side Peter and Paul and then in the middle was this was this image of the Assumption so we have first of all the the image of st. Peter I like to call this work this painting men at work because you have four guys who are working as usual Caravaggio is completely uninterested in the setting we know that Peter died in a horse racing sorry in a horse racing circus in front of people it was it was a big crowded noisy arena but Carvajal yet not interested he gives us four lonely men isolated against again a blank black backdrop you can you have nothing else to focus on but what they're doing all four of them are working but three of them don't really know what they're doing there's sort of endless than mindless cogs in a machine you are presented as you start looking at this painting with a big mustard-colored rear end and a pair of dirty bare feet that obviously that guy is not seeing the same foot doctor as st. Paul so scrabbling dirty feet and a big mustard-colored rear end but why is that rear end there it's a muscle group it's the gluteus maximus which is being used to lift the cross into place then you move to the next color-block he's literally color blocking yellow to red the red is the big red shoulder of the man who's lifting the cross into place and the third is the green of the back of the man who is pulling the pulling the cross up over his shoulder so you have yellow red green every one of these men has their faces in shadow all three of those men have no identity they are really just muscle groups they're just cogs in a machine they are mindless thoughtless elements who are just executing some sort of task so they can pick up the day's pay without ever asking themselves what they're doing the third the fourth man Peter not idealized he is not some sort of sort of gorgeous Briony model lying there like yes I might have an Italian waist here he's a big thick strong fisherman whose last effort the last burly effort of that man is to remain on that cross not looking at you this time Peter concentrates entirely on the nail in his hand willing himself to go the distance Caravaggio is very stark very powerful way of reminding us that that is Peter I either rock upon whom the church is built there's a big old rock in the foreground and least unless you missed that fortunately in Italian it's basically the same word pho pho so this rock upon which the church is built and if you just keep going a few steps forward you will see where that rock was buried in the Church of st. Peters in the meantime we have the hmm in the meantime we have a non clicking clicker all right there we go in the mean time we have the other one which is our st. Paul now Caravaggio first started by trying to do something a little bit more like Michelangelo's you can see in the first version of the cone of the conversion of salt you will see the image of Jesus who is doing a little bit of extreme sports upside down maneuver he's not as good as Michelangelo for the straight down but you see Jesus on the upper right-hand corner of the painting on the left and he's reaching down towards Saul Saul is an older man he's lying on the ground covering his eyes much like in the Michelangelo version a powerful steed starts to run off into the distance people are reacting it's a miniaturize version of what Michelangelo did without the blue sky but with Caravaggio's characteristic chiaro-scuro LED back backdrop and then Caravaggio looked at it and said no and he changed it again for what has to be the most startling image of the conversion of Saul imaginable the conversion of Saul apparently and just it's about a horse you had to see a man about a horse I mean I don't know what to tell you it's a gigantic painting of a horse so that that the two thirds of the space in that painting are occupied by an animal that's not a beautiful animal it's not the chestnut steed you see in the other one that is a work horse that is a sort of a cheap rent-a-car there that he's it's it's something you just rent that has to go from point A to point B the horse has no idea what's happening the man who's holding the bridle has no idea what's happening only sign that something is going on is that little splash of color on the bottom and Caravaggio again pulls out this amazing supernatural light which comes down vertically directly from heaven he has taken out Jesus he has dared to show a painting of the conversion of Saul and leave out the main interlocutor right the guy's thanked Saul why are you persecuting me and the fact is instead of putting in Jesus Caravaggio uses that pure beam of light the beam of light that passes over the animal the animal cannot perceive the presence of God passes over the man who's just thinking about like I just I really need to get home now and that's enough of that he's not he's not part of this story and that light finds its mark in a youthful saw lying on the ground no longer covering his eyes but opening his arms to accept this transformation so this again this imagery of the acceptance of conversion you walk into Rome you see this incredibly intimate view of a conversion not sitting around for fanfare and drums and red carpets and we're ready for you to convert now but something that represents that much more interior change that happens when you begin to see the light and Caravaggio use of color is also striking here you have the orange Curacao solace he lies instead of that red pool and behind him and he can what makes that interesting is that red of course mortality and and and and and martyrdom and all the other things you could possibly want but when you mix orange and red together you get the color of flame what does it feel like to convert what does it feel like to feel a direct contact with the Lord it feels like being set on fire you feel this igniting that's taking place at the bottom and from that ignition will spread out that tremendous work of the doctor of the Gentiles now our last is going to be the question of intercession which is the glass one's gonna be the question of cooperation which is a really typical fine what's a cooperation with your salvation right now this is actually it's like it's like a Catholic thing you're supposed to somehow cooperate with with the salvation you've been given but I sometimes kind of feels a bit like you're asking your dad for five bucks to buy you my Father's Day present right money but maybe you could let me summon get you some okay what are we gonna do what we can get Jesus kind of took care of all of it and so the idea of cooperation the idea of how we how we are supposed to demonstrate how we are supposed to show our our our gratitude is a very very interesting problem and the one I decided I would talk about when I was the most interested in is how we combat sin how do we go about cream making a war on sin and so if you're in the case of guido Rainey's Michael the Archangel a huge if you're really lucky you don't have to really do anything the Angels really they can combat sin without breaking a sweat as a matter of most of us don't get to do this this is Michael the Archangel he's conquering Satan he doesn't even get his little blue sandal shoe dirty he has a very sort of calm even though slightly slightly repulsed expression on his face angels it's really no it's no difficulty for them whatsoever and so there are a lot of images that they show where you've Michael conquering the arc and Michael the Archangel conquering Satan said Michael the Archangel is blue use of a blue it's a dispassionate cool color where is that the image of the the satanic figure kind of hulking out with his big heavy hands he looks a lot more ruddy a lot more passionate a lot more a creature of the earth and of his and of his desires but as I said it's easy for Michael the Archangel it's not so easy for the rest of us and so very interesting two lanes they're two different developments in art one direction is looking at people who have to combat sin and just what am I gonna do this very very very popular subject matter of Saint Susanna Susanna the Old Testament heroine who is bathing in the garden she's a married woman she's a very beautiful married woman she's bathing in the garden and along come - really creepy guys who say well here's the deal Susanna either you're gonna sleep with us or we're gonna say you did and you'll be accused of adultery and stoned to death so take your pick and she chooses she chooses to just take the accusation it's two against one it's two men against her and Daniel at the very last moment intervenes he interrogate them separately which is a moment where lawyers turn out to be the hero of the story you have the derogate some separately they contradict you said that she's ultimately vindicated but this moment that moment when she's cornered in the garden by evil she's got nowhere to go there's nothing she can do so where does she look she looks up one way of combating sin one way of fighting when you don't see you had any tools it's bigger than you are they're tougher than you are they're moving in the really really creepy one is kind of Hanley's like climbing over the bench right it's good go away she wraps herself in her in her white robe that beautiful image of purity that soft skin exposed you're you you're you're looking at it you feel horrible for her so what is she ever gonna do she looks upwards she looks up she prays she looks towards God for help because she is helpless and help is given to her but there are times when you can be a little bit more proactive and that's what makes her one of the most famous and I hope you haven't just sorry if you have it's awkward the one most most it's most often painted most frequently painted images of the counter-reformation is Judith and Holofernes Judith the wealthy Jewish Widow her when her people were threatened by the Assyrian general Holofernes who simply wanted passage and tributes so he could go to Jerusalem and wipe out Jerusalem while the men in her little village outside of Jerusalem were sitting around debating what to do she grabbed a bottle of wine showed up as his tent got him drunk chopped off his head came back dropped the head on the table and said your problem is solved and so this is an image that becomes very very famous but in the hands of Caravaggio it becomes something unforgettable Caravaggio is painting which is on the left has an extraordinarily beautiful Judith who is in the midst literally in the midst of cutting off his head the sword is pretty much through the bone it's just coming out the other side he has been taken out early by surprised that amazing expression of a man who was I'm pretty sure the evening wasn't gonna go this way and grabbing on to the grabbing on to the to the sheet and the red curtain in the background which is a really important piece of information for you it means you are looking at something that is meant to teach you this is a theatrical scene look at this story and learn from it look at her she is not having fun this is not how what she was gonna do today she had other plans but unfortunately Israel needs saving so I'm gonna be out doing this her whole entire body curves away from him even the dress can has a little pleat so it moves away but her arms are locked in a very very determined position it's not that I've tried this personally but I'm pretty sure you can't cut off someone's head like this so it's not about realism again it's not about as realism it's about the determination to do this thing no matter how much she doesn't want to you see that furrow in her brow which is reminiscent of that of David if David and Goliath they're actually often paired the two the two heroes and the one on the right hand side is by one of the most amazing painters of this era not only Caravaggio are in and out of prison guy but we have art Gentileschi an extraordinary woman whose reputation had been destroyed by at rape trial when she was 17 years old yet nonetheless redeemed her way back in that society through her gift and painting where she was commissioned by Cardinals and priests and Dukes and and and and and and all this counter-reformation Catholic world and she repeatedly painted these images of these beheadings and many of us think of many many people in art history of suspect or so we have suggested that the reason for the beheadings because she hate men his men and really bad okay 30 years later we can give that one a rest how about this she also paints as many Mary Magdalene's penitent Mary Magdalene's and I'd like to put to you that these two paintings Artemisia and Caravaggio both people who had a lot of demons that they had to wrestle down remind us of a little something about holiness which is really just not that easy sometimes sometimes you're gonna get splattered with mud sometimes you're gonna have to wrestle it down and saw the head off of whatever it is that your demon is and so there you have that Artemisia where she and that hand woman have got him down and she's got her knee ups on her way through her head sometimes you're gonna get dirty sometimes you're gonna get messy sometimes fighting sin is really just an ugly hard thing that you're gonna have to do and so we have these two strengths this very the work of Annie belay the elegant painter the painter of light and color who tells us offers us the road of prayer offers us the road of turning to God and are in our brokenness and then we have Caravaggio weave Artemisia who show us but you know every now and then we're gonna have to get up and fight these temptations and fight our way back from sin on our own so that we can indeed all end up in this glorious and glow in this glorious space of of heaven Michelangelo's Last Judgment which was actually the painting that kicked off the counter-reformation the Last Judgement painting it's a occupies the entire back wall of the Sistine Chapel one of the things that's very striking about it one of the things that got so many people upset about it with one of the reasons why the painting got into so much trouble in the 1560s if people said it was the nudity but it really wasn't just the nudity it was the fact that John the Baptist who is the first figure on the left-hand side who usually ate locusts and wild honey looks like mr. universe and he's wearing a camel hair thong we have a st. Andrew is next to him he's been doing a lot of squats on the other side you've got st. Peter who's looking fabulous at 70 but obviously for God is closed I mean basically what I'm getting at here is that you're looking at a whole bunch of sort of super-powered bodies and that includes by the way that mega Jesus who so so dramatically represented in the center so the point I'm trying to make here is that Michelangelo was the artist who first began to show us what it means to exercise heroic virtue what it means to cooperate in your salvation to wake up every morning and to make decisions and to exercise that heroic virtue so that one day you will have a glorious body in heaven and that is really this that is really the wonderful way that art was able to show us the way we put a picture on the refrigerator the new dress we'd like to buy or the way we'd like our hair to look or what we hope to dye it into the art of the 7 the art of the 17th century put before 16th 17th century we put before our eyes models and really beautiful ways to talk about our goals our dreams our desires to make our way to heaven how to make our way to heaven and really gave us a way to communicate without fighting but to communicate through beauty thank you well I think you did fine with the technology there we actually had a bishop from the Vatican here last year who said you know in regards to the joke about the the church and technology that you know what do you expect from an organization whose most important communication technologies whitesmoke so and I correct me if I'm wrong but it wasn't a lot of the nudity in this particular painting sort of rankled the feathers of some high-ranking cleric who's actually portrayed in the corner of this picture a little bit you know never get the artist angry because you'll get painted into the picture somehow well you know so much of what you talked about really resonates with the the mission of why the sheen centers here one of our favorite quotes around here is Benedict the 16th where he said that the two best tools that the church has for evangelization are the Saints that we give birth to and the art that we create so just thank you for being here because I think these these conversations about art and beauty is something that you know the church is really good at but maybe just doesn't often have the the opportunity to talk about and so we're just so lucky to have you here let's start off by talking about a modern artist filmmaker Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman who is not a person of faith I think he identified as an agnostic or an atheist once said that art lost its creative impulse when it was separated from worship and I think that's really taken up in in John Paul the second letter to artists where he emphasizes throughout the letter that the church needs artists and artists need the church can you unpack that a little bit and explain why both sides of that equation are important I think a lot of what I mean the church needs artists and the the the artists need the church I think this whole the the counter-reformation Eero really excite very explicit the church really needs ways to we need every way we can possibly think of to teach and to remind people we say the Creed every song but do we understand what each part of that Creed means to us and I think what art helps us to do is to really it's to unpack that and to make it make us feel like we own it it's a lot easier for us to understand something it's a lot easier for us to believe something when we've seen it and so art is a very powerful way of doing that but at the same time one of the things that happens in this the 17th century is we see a guy like Caravaggio Caravaggio had the possibility of having a perfectly reasonable career he probably could have made a lot of money doing fruit and flower and musical boys so at the met you have the cute little musical boys and in the in the picture the lute players the musicians the fruit and flowers could have done fine doing that but it's not Caravaggio's dream and he really really worked at this his dream was to become part of this elite squad of painters to which Annie belay kurachi already belonged who get to interpret and to teach and to and to manipulate a master the material of faith and present it to people there's so much to sink your teeth into when you want to talk about what it means to to be a saint what does it mean to communicate with saints what does it mean why how do we depict penance and I think this gave artists such an incredible amount of fodder that that's why we get these incredible proliferations in this in this period of just genius one after the other go stand in that large room in the Met where you have the counter-reformation painters you have Artemisia you've got barrace Ribera Annie believe we do Rainey Gretch you know all one room a bunch of geniuses all working all really rising to the fore in in in helping with this problem yeah I think I think it was Chester and who said that you know Christianity is inherently a dramatic faith you know it's the drama of salvation so the subject matter of the the drama of salvation is certainly an opportunity to to communicate that visually last month we had the first part of this series and we showed a documentary called masterpieces and it was really a profile of five young emerging artists and different disciplines and almost to a person all five artists said that their first expose to the arts was through their family through their parents they all grew up in homes where art was very important was that important growing up and you know with you is that where you got this love of art from as a matter of fact yes as I was talking about that just the other day the people often ask you know how do we bring back this love of art and that was sort of one of the last little epilogue of the book was really the fact that you have art in your homes or in in in in front of you we don't we don't have as many spaces for art and churches anymore but when you grow up with I grew up with jumble Onias jumble Onias mercury a little baby copy of it in my living room and all I did was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen and I couldn't wait to go to Italy and actually see the work we had FRA Filippo Lippi 'he's madonna and child and two Saints in one of the bedrooms and so this is one of the ways that art just became part of my life I must say and it's it sort of an interesting thing that I was really attracted to mythological art I guess odd this is a little bit a confession moment but with the bright lights it feels a little bit like an interrogation I was I was first very attracted to mythological art that's what I was going to do I was only interested in the mythology I loved there was no myth I didn't know in high school I had all sorts of unpleasant nicknames whose children think that's weird when you're that nerdy but I was no myth I didn't know I loved all of the the the mythological images I was really only interested in the Apollo and Daphne's and the Pluto's and Persephone's and the really fun love stories and when I got involved and started studying Italian art I was sort of like oh what is this why do they always have that lady and the baby why can't we have like more Apollo and you know Titian Venus's sort of lying here and there and then I began to a slowly realize one of the very first things I realized is the money was in the other stuff that they were pouring the money into the mail ad with the baby so I started to pay more attention to that because it was clear that that's where the patronage was going but then eventually I began to realize that unpacking a painting of an Apollo and Daphne has a lot of fun truths those paintings have truths about you know how humans feel and love stories and when love stories go wrong etc unrequited love but when you start unpacking a painting that has the truth of Catholicism in it it just keeps some packing and I'm packing and unpacking I think I've been unpacking the Pieta for 25 years now and every now and then I'll realize up there's still something left in that corner so really it's it's the richness of that art that you can start as a child but it just it will never and some of those works they really never stop offering they accompany you through your life and offer new ways for you to see it yeah I think probably one of my earliest recollections of the faith was at mass you know his children do I laying on my parent's lap looking up at the ceiling and there were these still remember the church that I grew up in there were these beautiful paintings of the Joyful Mysteries and I didn't understand what any of them meant but it was almost like a visual catechesis you know looking at the stained glass windows and and I wonder how many people really that's their first recollections of the faith just the images that stay with you I had a barn and some felt well we are at the sheen Center so I have to get in a sheen quote Fulton sheen said you can only understand the art of an age if you understand the philosophy of an age if the philosophy is nihilistic and ugly so will its art can you talk a little bit about current situations with art and do you think that is really a reflection of the artists or the overall philosophy of our age I I do agree fundamentally I do actually agree with the idea that philosophy drives art I do I do think that art picks up on currents of freedom achievement turbulence dissension nihilism and that it does it affects how the mainstream of our of mainly means we have art that's produced I do think that right now I think we have to draw a distinction between art that's produced and so the gallery spaces we have we have a very interesting problem and that art is produced for sort of strange areas produced for galleries produced for exhibition spaces for the pavilions of the Biennale we don't really have places in churches to put art and people don't really want religious art in their homes we very little of its apparently not so sufficiently as mellow as having some tulips or something and so we don't we don't we don't really create a place for religious art then to add to them it's the fragmentation separating the two sort of the contemporary mainstream art versus contemporary religious art contemporary religious art is very fragmented there doesn't seem to be a commonality to it it does also reflect in many ways the way that we have a kind of a sort of a strangely fragmented feel within the faith as well and I don't think it would be it would it would behoove us to start to bring these artists together so there's more interaction between them and also we just you need a different kind of you need a more active patronage I think it's it's also something that the 19th century has foisted on us the idea is that artists work in a vacuum what does an artist need a patron for what does an artist and the gallery owner can maybe sell his work for him but the artist doesn't need a patron the that's a that's a every one of these great paintings we see in in in great Catholic or early Christian art it comes out of patronage the patron does more than just act like an ATM machine the patron is a person who's in a position to be able to allow the artist to experience and to learn in such a way that it becomes a far more well-rounded character Bernini the patronage of ship you never work a day had Bernini looking through one of the first telescopes at the moons around Jupiter and then you know the next thing you know you have this kid who's showing us how to make the vin visible visible in these giant monuments and st. Peter's so I think I think what we really are lacking is a sense of a very a real patron class that is actively helping artists not just sort of sitting back and going you be you and whatever you want to do but really interacting with the artists yeah I mean in a small way that's what we're trying to do here in what you know we part of in addition to doing the events we do here we try to create almost a community of artists we have an artist in residency program I think we actually have two of our young residents here and that's certainly something that hopefully we can encourage on a wider scale one of the central thesis is of your book which which I love by the way is that in those moments of crisis it was art that really for lack of a better word came to the rescue and tried to refocus the faith could you talk a little bit about maybe some ideas that you have about how art could sort of fill a similar role now in our in our current moment of crisis in the church I think I think art has a really effective way so I take people around the Vatican all the time of all different sorts and all different beliefs and backgrounds and everything and you know we all stand in front and we stand in front of the pietá and we start looking at the PIAT on people everybody I've never run into in my entire life what is it twenty-something career that year of doing tours no one's ever said I don't really like this statue right no one's ever said the Pieta exactly and so there many people people all he can think of is just selfie in front of it but nobody sort of walks by and says oh that old thing that was most was that was underwhelming I had one very irritating student however we said the Sistine Chapel was underwhelming and so was his great the so the the the fact is the the the work like that you can start by simply talking about you know what's new about it how Michelangelo for the first time uses a body of Jesus that's not you know beat-up like the German ones that came before it but as you begin to just move a little bit further people it's as you unveil the lights like a dance of the Seven Veils so you can start you start with the formal and you talk about this cool new thing that Michelangelo did then you think about why he might have done it then you think about where it was placed and you think about this shining white body of Jesus which looks like it's gonna fall off Mary's lap onto the altar you look at Mary's face she's got this expression why does she have an expression like that why she looks so young well you know that's a lot like the expression of the Annunciation that that moment that mary says I am the hand the Lord let it be done to me according to thy will and entering into the story the actual Gospel story while looking at that work it doesn't really matter what your religious background is you're going into you're walking into a story of humanity which speaks to everybody and I think art really does have that capacity to speak to humanity I'm not saying everybody's gonna walk away saying oh yeah well now I obviously believe in the real presence but at least we have a compelling and beautiful way of putting forward that idea this is why the Eucharist matters to us so much because this woman had the son and son was God she's giving up her son she's giving him to you it doesn't that matter so I think it does have I mean art has a way of allowing the best of us to come to the fore I mean I always say I'm very I'm the luckiest person in the world in my job I see people honestly at their best right how you are never no offense but you're never better than when you're on vacation like if I were working at Duane Reade I probably would not see everybody at their best but when you see people on vacation you in Rome they've just come from like the Prosecco and breakfast I see people at their best and then I get to see the best come out of them because I see them in front of these works of art so it's it's really a very it's it's a it's a it's a it's a good gig that's an understatement but yeah I guess it is that power of beauty it's one of the lowest last universal languages that can resonate with everyone I recently attended a talk with the Scottish composer and a very devout Catholic Sir James McMillan and he was talking about the importance of a need for the revival of Catholic music and would you think that moving forward is the answer a deeper appreciation for some sort of a neoclassical ISM where you return to this type of art or is there a need for some you know modern expression that can to use your phrase you know stimulate piety I know Pope Paul the sixth I believe was it was very interested even at the Vatican Museum of introducing Modern Art into into that same space for conversation there's there's a lot in that in the in that question I momentarily distracted at the idea of trying to create the Konya liturgy but I don't think the world is ready for that but but so music obviously yes music is one of the things about the Sistine Chapel is that the Sistine Chapel and the exterior it's a very boring building it's it from the outside it's not that exciting it's it's brick building in the interior it's got that amazing painting which already has everybody you know amazed but the appoint of the Sistine Chapel was to bring the papal court so we're talking about five hundred men the highest-ranking members of the court into a space where they prayed together they prayed together for the church they prayed for the souls in the church they prayed for they elected the Pope and there I mean really this is the most profound space of Prayer among the men who are the most deeply engaged with the workings of the church so once they locked themselves in that room because after all once they all walked into the Sistine Chapel you had the entire hierarchy of the church in one room and Cesare Borgia was really good at getting people into one room like getting rid of all of them so that was not a very good you obviously it's a building that need to be defended so the fact is you get them inside there inside this defensive building but somehow you've got to open them up to the Holy Spirit and the church really it has three privileged ways it's the liturgy first and foremost which is where the music part comes in the second is music music has this tremendously transported of capacity which Pope Benedict the 16th was always noticing and then he was much more he's actually many ways more sensitive to music than he used to painting and then of course we have painting and painting actually trails behind these other two I mean with music when some of the music in the Sistine Chapel was really extraordinary and so basically the the interesting question the interesting fragment of the question that's kind of opening up that's the that's the that's the sparkling the back of my head is you know a beautiful music has to work in the function of the liturgy I mean it's not just Christmas songs or like you know whatever it's gonna be it's it's it's God I mean really it functions as part of the liturgy the painting is part the liturgy the the the sculpture is part of the liturgy and the great music is part of the liturgy so many ways what we really kind of need to do is really get a better sense of the focus on what we're doing in in that what is the point of all of us being inside that sacred space evoking the presence of God and so yes music is tremendously important I think it's part of a general sense of how do we evoke the presence of God in the Catholic Mass well I think that comes back to you know Bergman's remark about the creative impulse was when art was separated from worship you know you're bringing up the the sort of the the joke about Kanye West I think you're right your remarks about Caravaggio really brings up an interesting point because we've had a lot of conversations with different artists here at the sheen Center and a lot of questions that have often been asked as can you or should you separate the artist from the art and Caravaggio I think speaks you know volumes about a a flawed even a deeply flawed human being can sometimes create a masterful piece of work I think many Caravaggio would not have been Caravaggio if he had not been struggling with his own light and dark and I think one of the things that's very poignant Artemisia Gentileschi is very similar Artemisia Gentileschi herself got herself into a lot beyond the earlier problem of the rape at 17 she she gets herself into a lot of trouble and so you see a woman who is constantly trying to get back on track and constantly falling to the wayside and Caravaggio is exactly the same and what is really striking about Caravaggio I was just I've been sort of intensely working on him for the past few months and one of the things that's so moving is that Caravaggio understands the qualities and the characteristics that are necessary for sanctity and in particular he recognizes that the one that you really really need is a good dose of humility and he doesn't have it he's just he's just missing the humility gene and so the the struggle which becomes so beautiful so poignant and so it resonates so strongly with us is a man who though it's light is as clear as day those slashing lights he puts into the painting he can see exactly what it is he's supposed to do and yet he has such difficulty doing it and so that legacy that he leaves us where he how we have this dramatic trial of this encroaching darkness and fighting it back with the light and the constant struggle and the grittiness of everyday looking for the one thing that will take ordinary ugliness and make it extraordinary no one no one but Caravaggio would have been able to do it because he lived it so intensely and I think many people have actually experienced it doesn't have to be an artist to experience this but many people have experience there you are you so stuck in a sinful stay sinners all of us I'm not very good at getting out of my sinful state but I'm really good at this one thing so let me just put all my got into that one thing and maybe I'll just keep doing that's my best and the best I can give you is that and in the meantime we'll try working out the other stuff and that's what Caravaggio Artemisia Mel Gibson was able to do give us these images you've given they can see and they can point the way even though sometimes you see them you know bobbing underwater themselves at least they can send up the flare to show us where to go and I think those artists are tremendously precious to us I really don't know what to tell you about Konya well here I mean it's so eloquent you just said reminds was one of my favorite lines in John Paul the seconds letter to artist is saying that ultimately the the this is paraphrasing but the the ultimate canvas is to create a masterpiece out of your life so well we were having an interesting conversation upstairs before we came down and without going to you know off key here you said some really interesting things about how you know obviously a lot of the art that we're talking about now is is very Eurocentric and we talked about how other cultures have these magnificent artistic creations but it was part of that legacy of the greco-roman understanding of trying to capture the human form that sort of resonated in a particular way with throughout church history so Catholic art is incarnation all the only reason why we have Catholic art is because God became man it's the only reason why we have it the first commandment we are derived from the Jew our Jewish older Jewish breath brethren we are derived from the ten commandments and ten commandments first commandment codicil of the first commandment is thou shalt not make images of anything the flies in the air walks on there swims in the sea where no images and yet here we are you know with Museum upon Museum of my Museum of Catholic art so obviously someone missed a memo and the fact of the matter is the reason why the Christians it takes him a while it takes him close to two centuries but the reason why Christians make art is because of the Incarnation when God John st. John Damascene puts it very beautifully once God becomes visible then you can make a likeness of him and so this idea of God who wants us to know him his self revelation into becoming someone that you can see and you can touch and you can hold on to the hem of his robe and you he'll still spit in the dirt and touch your eyes you he sits at parties he cooks up fish for his friends he is a human being that can be known and an experienced a baby that can be held and that's what Christian art holds on to its incarnation 'el and Carinae the word the word in Italian it means flesh and so no wonder it's in that cradle this European cradle were already the Greeks in the fourth century BC had perfected the representation of the human body so while the Egyptians made really big sculptures that last forever I mean you know four thousand we're old work that looks like it had a bad FedEx trip it's impressive the Egyptians did not have that love of the human body they had the love of permanence but not the love of the body along come the Greeks and the Greeks are completely focused on the representation of the most perfect body they can possibly as human beings create the Romans take those bodies and they use them in myriad ways and in come the Christians to speak to the Greeks and speak to the Romans and they enter into this rack of showing the body not just for the abstract ideal of being an Apollo but the body that we are all supposed to share into the body of Christ the body of the church and the body that we are supposed to be resurrected and in heaven and so the Christians really that the European Christianity has an image of how the body is central to the to the to the story of salvation precisely because of Jesus's human experience and it is the only place that really focused so closely on that for so many different centuries and that's really why other other other countries other places make beautiful things but that kind of imagery a pietà has to come out of a European out of a European matrix yeah I glad you mentioned John Damascene because we wouldn't have any of these slides if you know if he hadn't sort of won out in the the great okay we're gonna digress a little bit into some lowbrow a question right now I made me very happy to hear in an interview that you had given that you made several times the remark that it all comes back to Marvel movies as a card-carrying comic book geek I was wondering can we talk a little bit about the role of pop culture art because in a way not to do any disservice to these magnificent works of art but in their day these paneled artworks were the graphic novels of their day in fact we had a priest here who taught over at the North American College who happens to like comic books and they told a great story they wouldn't let him teach a course on comic art so he came up with the name sequential art and they said yeah okay you can teach that so can we talk a little bit about the role of pop culture art in building on you know this legacy of communicating stories and ideas visually I actually am really fascinated by the by the pop culture the pop culture art because Caravaggio really was he's a pop culture his work see that's what he was looking for that's that's what he was doing he was doing these that all indi things for people's houses and then he wants to be in a big blockbuster Church painting so that everyone knows his name he wants to be throw money at the picture make the picture bigger you know do something he really wants to be on the cutting edge and I think the so art becomes very pulp pop culture both in the Renaissance and both both of Renaissance and the counter-reformation and Baroque era where this becomes something for public consumption it does take it does because there's such public works there's always a sense of responsibility on the part of the artist towards the public so Caravaggio gets paid the occasional painting rejected because karma is getting a little bit too edgy and is leading his is very general public off in a direction that they ought not to go and one of the things about the giant Marvel juggernaut at least up until this this first phase as it were of the Marvel Universe is that they've always kept an eye on their target audience and so they've been very they've been very interested in this battle between good and evil self-sacrifice and and and you know every now and then when you start scratching your heads and thinking they're about to go off the reservation then you hear them sort of focusing on a film on one basically theme which is the life of one is not worth sacrificing maybe this is the life of one matters I mean the tremendous sense of the the this there's a sense of self-sacrifice but you don't send one person out you don't choose the one person and then the one can sacrifice one himself but the society cannot sacrifice the person for the good of society and it's it's a it's it's a it's it's a remarkable way to put values back in front of people they've had very very good and and and and and uplifting values in those movies and so if you can the Pixar is very similar if you you have movies that everybody's going to see that hold up great values that people talk about cheerfully and happily that's a really really great thing I have to admit my favorite part I remember I was sort of watching the first movie the first Avengers movie and was just liking it a little bit too much and when I was sitting there thinking you know this is bad idea being led down some horrible path and then there's that scene where Captain America Thor in Iron Man and Loki have all jumped out of the airplane and he's Captain America's goes and picks up his PES past his parachute and he's about to jump off the edge there and Black Widow says you shouldn't do that they're pretty much gods and he says there's only one God ma'am and I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that and and I actually I over the years I become friends with one of the Marvel producers and I told him that was like it's okay but I like Marvel and he told me it was actually very hard to keep that in there was a lot of discussion about well you know that's a little bit too Christian and the the Marvel producers had to go and explain to the distributor's that this is the character you know he grew up in the 1930s 40s Protestant kid New York is he's he's gonna be using that kind of reference but they had to defend it they had to defend the use of that line and they did and I'm very glad that they did I was a lifelong DC fan I have to say I'm ashamed well you didn't tell me that no yeah that's deal-breaker well I'm doing do before and I found out that dr. Lev is from Boston so the Yankee fan we're building walls not bridges shameless plug for a second next this Thursday we are actually having a event here about pop culture or giving Batman his 80th birthday this year so we're having a whole event about Batman you can get tickets on our website so Val Kilmer George Clooney Christian Bale Robert Pattinson which what are you having Ben Affleck won West we're talking about them all we're talking about them all but haddem West that would be quite a feat that word is so so now we've just now we've figured out that Caravaggio would have been hired by Disney to do the blockbusters of his day but you know an all joking aside you know Flannery O'Connor once said that for the heart you know for the blind you have to write large and I think whether it's Marvel movies or The Last Judgement you know art has a way of writing things large and shouting them out so I want to give some chance for the audience to ask some questions and while they're trying to figure out their questions I go one last question for you we started out with that quote by Pope Benedict about the Saints and the Ark being the two best tools we've talked a lot about art I'm sure we'll get some more questions about art but going back to the Saints if the you work in Rome if the Pope came up to you one day and gave you a special dispensation and said for a one-time-only I'm going to allow you to proclaim one of these artists a saint which would it be and why well they've been trying with Michelangelo for so long I I do I would if I got a dispensation it would be Michelangelo I think he's led more people to the faith than then in any other Michelangelo also his deep deep deep spiritual struggles he was a very deep man deeply deeply religious the reason the the immediately upon his death it was evident that the artistic world was looking for a chance to have him raised to the altars as they say and the famous story that after he'd been dead for 27 days he shows up in Florence and they go to open up the tomb and Giorgio Vasari who says he was there and Giorgio Vasari who's the biographer of his very important biographer of Renaissance artists he says when they opened the tomb of Michelangelo after Michelangelo had been dead for 27 days he looked like he was sleeping and he emanated a smell of roses and those are that's those are the exact descriptions what happens when you open the tomb of a saying that was like that nice try George oh now carbon when people have and speculated why I mean there are outside of Frangelico there are no sainted artists and there are no saint musicians apparently it's just sainthood don't there no saint art historians either so it's fairly early just not not a field that produces a lot of saints but when it went Michelangelo was deeply disturbed about towards the end of his life you can glean this from some of his poetry he was very worried about the fact that this tremendous fame that he had garnered the question is had he done it for himself or had he done it for God and there evident I mean obviously this is a man I was very concerned about building his brand and I think that that troubled him a great deal that he was often spurred by the desire for personal success but if I the Pope said listen I'm just me taking my cue from you I'd be saying no they make it Michelangelo I did want to also say one other thing about the idea of art and and writing large and Flannery O'Connor in the in the counter-reformation era one of the things they do tell artists this is an essential part of art you don't have to look at a painting like the Catholic Church there is nowhere in the Catechism that says go look at this painting or else right we don't have to look at a painting a painting is going to get you to look at it because it is fun to look at so it's just like the pop culture problem art has to teach and to delight it's got to send a message but it also has to be something that you want to look at and so the study of whether you're gonna use beautiful bodies or beautiful colors or beautiful composition how do you get people how do you delight people enough to look at your work long enough so that you can absorb the message that the work is trying to send I think part of the problem of some modern art is that there also has to be talent involved it's easy to want to look at some of these but so Caravaggio doesn't make the list if possible saying see you gave me one okay yeah the murder of brucha tomassoni is a little bit of an issue why I would always make the argument about Dante as well but the problem with him is the people are making the decisions some of those future popes he ended up putting in the rings of hell so that's not a way to awkward awkward yeah so you notice a lot of these names happen to be in Italian and so as an italian-american I just like to feel that you know we'd ended up really saving everything here yes I should have just called how Italians there you go that's actually so let's turn on the lights a little bit and we'll take some questions from the audience if you can raise your hand okay see right there Wow oh there are people there stirred here and one thing is I just asked that you if you have a question please do frame it in the form of a question so we could try to fit in as many as we can yes ma'am is there a user picture question is there is there a question though okay okay thank you ma'am thank you very much oh it's timeless I mean my point my point about the art that was produced in this period and the part that's produced in in in other periods a gothic Church made in the 13th century it's timeless it's for the past it's for the future Caravaggio speaks to just as many people today as he did 400 years ago when he painted and I have a funny feeling he'll keep speaking 400 years from now the amazing thing about the Sistine Chapel Michelangelo paints the beginning of the world and the end of the world the ceiling is the beginning of human history the the wall the Last Judgement is the end of human history no matter when we're there no matter if we're there in 1215 hundred two thousand four thousand eight thousand five hundred and twenty six we will always be between those two points pretty much every future it is our future we just need to get some other questions and mem please when I'm back next year with my new book about Michelangelo we will tackle the question of Michelangelo not being gay next yes yes sir right here so the kind of information good question haha the kind of information really the the taking the bull by the horns begins with the Council of Trent which starts in 1545 what that means is that the church brings together bishops and from all over the place in order to talk about church teaching to reaffirm church teaching to look at it in the light of the modern problems that the church is facing and then to ask themselves how are we going to represent this church teaching to a world that has other options it's one thing to say this is the only place where you're going to get communion this is the only community you have now there are a whole bunch of other communions then why is this one special so they need to kind of begin to they have to confront these these new problems the other thing they deal with mechanically and very very carefully is the question of reform so they first talk about concepts sacraments etc etc and then afterwards they talk about concrete things we have to do to reform the church this goes on for about 20 years because there are people who want more reform in people who want less reform and that is the period of the actual digestion of the problem and then trying to resolve the problem from 1570 1580 to 1600 you see these first artists who are really you could almost see the handbook in front of them okay I'm supposed to do this I'm supposed to do that and that period flowers into the Baroque one of the reasons why I got so interested in this period is that the Baroque is such a compelling and beautiful period just it's just it's amazing the things that Bernini produces but when you begin to understand you want to understand where Bernini is coming from you have to back up and find out all of the ideas all of them all of the best ideas he uses was actually first flowed were actually first floated by a counter-reformation artist so that's it canikin flows into the other does that make sense and the church has to constantly do this the church that Second Vatican Council was meant to be another trend the church has to constantly do this because first of all we we lose every every once in a while we begin to lose track of what we teach so the one I always use when people look horrified at the dead bodies we keep under the altars and st. Peter's st. Peter's we have like random dead bodies under the altar de gustibus the people is like what is that well you know we all say at the end of the Creed well we believe in the bodily resurrection but how many of us actually think about what that means like what does it mean to believe in the bodily resurrection and so we have to constantly reteach them it's like every now and then the church comes out with this notice about cremation but the church and Lau's cremation yeah we've done this for 30 years now the reason why we mention it all the time is because the sentence that comes afterwards yes we allow cremation the church accepts cremation but we must remember that we do believe in the bodily resurrection our body will be restored in and presented before God so that's we always in need always always we need more art to explain sacraments now more than ever I mean really now more than ever so yes it's a very good point and and and and you're absolutely right yes in the back car watch is a fascinating guy because he's so have that personality that God I'm into all that trouble is the same personality that allowed him to look at what everybody else is doing and decide that I just I don't want to be like those guys but nonetheless he looks very very closely at Michelangelo and Raphael when you look carefully carefully when you spend some time on it you see his best ideas are the idea of the light and dark comes from Raphael he got the idea of light and dark from Raphael he gets the idea of this breaking of the fourth wall that he does that comes from Michelangelo and these figures that that are occupying the the interesting thing about a Caravaggio painting again go to the Met go look at those two paintings they have they're the same size you are they're very iconic he makes figures that are extraordinarily iconic so Caravaggio in some extent he does look a little an ancient art he does look a little at Michelangelo he does look a little at Raphael but he's so interested in forging that name Caravaggio you know his real name was Michelangelo so that was inconvenient he shows up he's like my name is Michael and I'm a showgirl I'm Michelangelo no you're not so the the work that Caravaggio does is is is bringing out his and this is I think a lesson to all artists he does work within that framework of these large figures understood he's absorbed with the counter-reformation wants but he knows his own strengths what makes every single one of these guys astonishing Michelangelo knows his strengths he's got to paint a ceiling I'm a sculptor you know what I'm gonna do I'm gonna make a whole bunch of people flexing on the ceiling and a marble framework Raphael he's got this fearlessness he's anything I'd I'll try anything and he brings that out Caravaggio he's a still-life painter he knows how to manipulate oil so he adds these gritty little real-life details that ground us into the actual world it's a really it's a it's a mcc's him standout it makes him very unique he brings his he does not shy away from his own particular talent it's it's interesting the way you described I know when john paul ii first used the phrase the New Evangelization he was said you know timeless truths but with new methods and new order well they were kind of doing the New Evangelization for their day absolutely sir the first in the second one is an open argument among our error destroys because we don't have the document about why the painting came off the wall so there is there are two different schools there's the school that believes that for some reason it was rejected but we don't have any document that says it was rejected unlike the Santa Maria the the death of the Virgin unlike the first version of Matthew unlike the Madonna of the palace Ranieri so those three were overtly rejected the second theory says he took it down at the last minute and he decided to do a second one which the certain sense makes more sense to me because that painting doesn't match the other one well at all and so it's a painting that that's thats all looks a little bit more like his his Doria pum feely paintings which is still a style that's a little bit of his earlier work and so that he kind of rethought it and has the guts to do it's a very it's a really gutsy thing to do those three figures and the Saw III fall into the category the think that say he chose to take it down and to put up this painting that was so in-your-face Annie ballet and it pairs much better with the other one that I mean they I mean if you'd put them in there and they were saying you'd be like what just happened here so the other one really pairs it keeps that very very dramatic strength you had your hand raised you and and you've been trying to get there's always yes you're right there is it's exactly right I mean there is always that story the whole point the Bible is that it's supposed to be able to talk to us till you know the world ends I think so I think there there are I think there are a couple of ways that art catholic art today or art today in in the catholic church needs to find a medium that is more its user-friendly catholic paintings are very nice but but 90% of them are gonna go into someone's house so it's that's nice and it's good and it's lovely and we have millions of beautiful paintings from the Renaissance that are meant to be for houses but if you really want a blockbuster you've really got to find a better way to engage in pop culture so the idea of music the idea of cinema the idea of theater the idea of a Catholic art that doesn't necessarily have to be the representation of the story of the passion or something although Mel Gibson brought zillions of people in to watch the story of the passion it doesn't necessarily have to be so overtly Catholic all it really requires is to have that Catholic imagination the idea of the way the Catholics see the world is what andrew greeley described as an enchanted place that there's always something that can point to something beyond so you don't have to retread the same old story of Saint Sebastian exactly the way it happened in Saint Sebastian but you can take stories of martyrdom and sacrifice and and and and pointing towards a universal truth and that already begins to change the way the society changed the way the society feels about truth what you really want I mean you're the fundamental problem right now is that you're dealing with this I a society that doesn't believe in truth or beauty or really goodness so I would say it's much easier in that taste take a step back and get people to believe in in in that there is such a thing as truth and there is such a thing as the beautiful and there is a great space for artists to work in this exact moment because you are constantly surrounded by ugly or flashy or bland land yeah yes sir I think III always I always think I always say if Michelangelo lived today he'd be working for Pixar this because in in Pixar there are two things that are very engaging one is there's a tremendous amount of craftsmanship you can see in each one of the Pixar movies they've set themselves at Eklund technical problem a formal problem to resolve so you know the movement of Sully's hair in Monsters Inc the wet the wet the the animation of things wet in The Incredibles it's it's actually really interesting that you see them rap they revel in the challenge of trying to figure out how to do these very technical and in art history would have called them formal it's almost like a Raphael type of desire to overcome problems like really formal problems on how to represent something - they are bound and determined that every one of those movies draws out a universal truth in value every one of those movies holds up a universal truth so whether it is the importance of family the sincerity of friendship this intergenerational sense of loss and rediscovery they they draw out themes that are profoundly profoundly existentially christian and they draw them out in a Christian way and so they are they they they in my mind until the Disney machine destroys them they are in my mind some of the best examples of brilliant I mean just careful genius jubilant craftsmanship I can feel how much they love making those movies I can I want to be one of them because it seems like it must be they must be so proud of themselves at the end of this movie look what we did so you can feel that pride in their craftsmanship and at the same time they are telling stories that they are inventing right they're not they're not telling us old stories they're inventing new stories sort of contemporary situations that draw out great and universal truth so I that's that would be my answer no not so I see your point but I don't think that is a sufficient reason for the dearth in art people who didn't hear mass in their own languages first of all they all knew the the intonation and they there were parts that they did participate in so the the mass was separated into different sections the preaching is in their own language what's happening behind the screen it's it's evident because people do I mean even if it were in Latin you would understand the between the intonation z' between the bells you understand what is happening so I think I think the the problem with churches is we we've we've lost that sense of frequenting the churches quite as much as people used to and making it much more of a personal space churches had a much more of a sense of being a sort of like a home away from home we don't have spaces in churches for art we don't really and and and when we do we don't really exploit them very well and and despite the fact that everybody hears the mass in in his or her own language it doesn't seem to be engaging isn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't seem to teach people quite as much about the liturgy as one would have thought so it's not really only a question of hearing it and being able to understand it but really being able to feel it and art and music and these other elements are part of what make people really feel that they're present I think I think a lot of what you talked about with some of the culture being ugly or bland in some cases even affecting you know the sacred spaces in which we you know modern church architecture in some cases is not that conducive to not so much the truth another word that I would throw out would almost be the sense of mystery I think a lot of it comes to mystery well we're kind of out of time but I want to ask one question on behalf of I do know like I said our two young Shinar sir here they're here somewhere Lucy and Aaron but if you dr. love who surround yourself who live around this beauty on a daily basis could write your own letter to artists today what would your encouragement be to young Catholic artists who are trying to be the next generation of creators that Michelangelo or hopefully not Caravaggio in some regards are trying to stimulate piety or stimulate that sense of mystery I think it would be don't be afraid of letting the art ie truth lead you where it's going to lead you and I would say the one of the things that makes art very that makes the artist very compelling what we've been talking so much about Caravaggio is that we feel him living it as it were we feel the the the problem of faith and adherence to the faith on his own skin as it were I give you the better answer is a sort of a more of a personal anecdote when I went to University of Chicago and University of Bologna I wasn't religious at all I didn't care about religion or the faith slightly when I got this thesis topic I was like oh you've got to be kidding me as I wanted to do bernini's Apollo and Daphne me and so I it was partially the training at University of Bologna requires that you learn about the context of art the way they put it is that you have to understand the soil from whence a work of art comes and so that means you need to know all the components in the soil so if I'm doing a work that's in a church then I need to know what's happening in the church there's no point am i studying an altarpiece if I don't know what happens at the altar so gradually I began to and to pay more attention to that then I started doing tours of the Vatican simultaneously and I know you might not believe this because I seem like such a nice type B person but everybody laughs I don't but apparently I don't like to be asked a question that I can't answer so I'll be giving these tours and the back of my head I'd be asking all these questions in my mind that I wasn't able to answer I was like what if they ask me this what if they asked me that what if they asked me this and so I decided in order to get a better hang of things I would take night theology classes and I started to you know begin to realize as I as I began to look in this at art from a theological perspective and I began to if it just it was like it was like when Copernicus looked at the heavens and said we'll wait wait a minute what if the Sun were stationary and the earth were moving it's kind of how I felt when I said well what if Michelangelo believed this stuff and all these things that he was doing were coming from a place of believing what they say happens on the altar and believing that these people actually existed and once I hit that point there was no question that I could not come up with a plausible answer for there was always an answer that I could defend and make sound logical in my head then from there it wasn't that much further for me to realize well wait a minute if Michelangelo believes this and he's my best friend why don't I believe it and so my advice to artists is that's a frightening moment the brightening moment when you realize the way that you've been living your life you have to go and look at your life and go alright well if I'm gonna do this I'm gonna have to make some big and somewhat unpleasant changes and so it's a terrifying thing art is a terrifyingly powerful thing that's what benedict was really after he says Beauty wounds power the power that art has Beauty has to change you just like if you fall in love with someone and that someone is so special you'll move to another country the things you will do when you fall in love with a beautiful person is very art has a shadow it has a pot as part of that kind of power and so don't be afraid of that power Caravaggio was not afraid of that power it was terrifying for him to have to change his leg was painful for him he struggled with it but he we faced it and that's what made his art so great and so I think that the best thing I can tell you is that you'll know the more that you feel this this tug of art pulling you in a direction that you almost don't want to go then you know you're getting there that's really that is that is what art is supposed to do it's supposed to make you vulnerable it's supposed to make you open and receptive to new ideas and new concepts and it can't truly honestly I'm sitting here telling you it can truly change your life it's a beautiful quote it's the beauty is the arrow that wounds the heart and what's the truth in well I could sit here and and talk with you all night but you know in your book I think you referenced the the Latin saying art for art's sake the old MGM logo but you you make the case in the very compelling case that in addition to you know rather than art for art's sake it should be art to educate and delight and you have done both of those for us today so thank you so very much thank all of you thank you

Channel: Sheen Talks

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Length: 107min 18sec (6438 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 24 2020