Faith & Thought

Beauty Is Not Always in The Eye of the Beholder

As soon as I read Angela Alaimo O’Donnell’s excellent essay in “America” (January 2025) entitled “Jesus, Mary, and Satan at the Met,” I knew that I would have to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan so that I could experience this almost incredible exhibit: “Siena: the Rise of Painting, 1300-1350.” The following is part of O’Donnell’s opening paragraph:

“A vast space, dark and brooding, houses the exhibition — the better to see the images on display, the blazing blues, and the gorgeous golds beautiful and bracing against a black backdrop. But the darkened space, punctuated by columns evoking the medieval cathedral of Sienna, also seems a foreboding of the times to come.”

O’Donnell reminds us that in 1348, the Black Death would strike Sienna and rage for six months, killing half the city’s population. Hundreds of people were stricken each day. Two words that keep returning to me as I reflect on my experience of the exhibit are “overwhelming” and “breathtaking.” There were 100 objects of art to be experienced. Among those objects were paintings, sculptures, metalwork, and textiles. How can I express in this column what an extraordinary exhibit the Met presented, and how can I express my experience of the exhibit? I suspect I can do neither, but whatever is worth doing is worth doing poorly.

The day I visited the exhibit, the space was very crowded, but there seemed to be politeness, even reverence, in the rooms that housed the exhibit. It was as though the beauty of the works of art worked its magic on those viewing the exhibit. To read the comments on each work of art and even to view the work, some movement toward the works was required.

Everyone was super polite and seemed to be considering how to help others experience the overwhelming beauty that the exhibit presented. Four artists were featured in the exhibit: Duccio di Boninsegna, Oietro and Ambrogio Loerenzetti, and Simone Martini. Two of these artists died in the plague, but before they died they left a legacy that is amazing.

O’Donnell writes the following: “My favorite painting, placed at the end of the exhibit, clearly occupying pride of place, is Simone Martini’s ‘Christ Discovered in the Temple’ (1342). The painting depicts Mary and Joseph disciplining Jesus for going to the temple without telling them.

“The focus is on their parental concern for his safety, their relief combined with their anger: Joseph’s stern face, showing his disappointment at his foster son’s thoughtlessness; Mary’s mild correction, gesticulating as she holds a book in her hand, as if to tell him that she understands his love of the law but also to say how worried she was; and young Jesus, a resentful adolescent, hugging himself with his hands and arms, a defensive gesture, silently suffering the onslaught from his benighted and overprotective parents.

“It is a scene from the life of any family, Sienise or American, 14th century or 21st. The painting is startling in its honest and poignant depiction of universal dynamics, offering an interpretation of a well-worn Gospel story that I had never seen before.”
I appreciate O’Donnell’s insights into the painting but it was not my favorite painting. A painting that I especially liked was “The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine”(Barna di Sienna, 1340). It may have been the only painting I viewed without first reading the notes about it. When I started viewing it, I could not figure out what was being depicted. When I read the notes I experienced something of its brilliance.

Viewing so many works of art that depict truths that the Catholic faith teaches was like a tour through the ages of faith. Several times while viewing the exhibit I marveled at the effort and intelligence that made such an exhibit possible. I cannot even imagine what creating an exhibit involves in terms of work and intelligent creativity. I felt a strong sense of gratitude toward those whose intelligence and hard work made the exhibit possible.

What a blessing it is to have the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. What a great service it provides. The following is the ending that O’Donnell gave to her extraordinary essay:

“‘Beauty will save the world,’ Dostoyevsky once wrote. Maybe not from plague, and maybe not from politics (which seems to be the plague of our current moment). But even the darkest forces cannot defeat the power of the human imagination — and, in this case, the Catholic imagination — to redeem a broken and suffering world, reminding us of our people and our story; that Mary says yes, Christ is born, the dead will be raised, saints walk among us, and the devil is hammered.”

Amen!


Father Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica. His new book, “The Cosmic Love Story: God and Us,” is available on Amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.