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I've walked all of South Philadelphia in the past week. Although you'd never expect it, there are temples and shrines hidden there: statues sheltered, incense and candles burnt, and coins, flowers, songs, cigarettes, oranges, and, in one case, orange soda, offered to the Virgin, and to saints, and to goddesses whose names I don't know.
I've not been to mass, but my thoughts have been with the season. I peek into the doors of churches when they are open. I bless myself in the street.
In celebration of Holy Week, I offer the following selection from The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion by Leo Steinberg:
( Roger van der Weyden's Crucifixion... )
As a compositional artifice, this banner loincloth is an inspired invention. It resolves a pictorial problem posed by conventional Crucifixion designs - the problem of vacant flanks in the middle zone of the field between crossbeam and horizon. By means of a gorgeous flutter flaring forth from the center, the blanks are repleted and animated; and so felicitous is the solution that its aptness on grounds other than formal has never been challenged. No one has questioned the wisdom of making such pageantry of a breechcloth; or grudged its turbulence as a wind gauge where no breath is stirring; nor its plausibility in a narrative that calls for the least covering of a victim whose garments are the coveted loot of his executioners.
The full deployment of this invention, as of so many, appears to be due to Roger van der Weyden (Campin perhaps cooperating...). In several of Roger's Crucifixions, the spare aprons of the earlier masters unfurl into flying banners, buoyed up by an indwelling breeze where all else is becalmed. By 1500, these streamers winging the sacred loins glorify most German crucifixes... - often over-abundantly, as if less were lèse majesté. Yet, ostensibly, still a loincloth. Only the inherent metaphoricity of Renaissance realism could exalt this humblest of garments to such efflorescence, and convert the ostentatio genitalium decently into a fanfare of cosmic triumph.
Christ, dying, graced us with innumerable examples. The sartorial lesson, though it may be least among them, still should not be forgotten. What you wear matters less than the manner in which you wear it. I like frivolous morals, and I would count this among them if the churches themselves did not seem to remember it. Altars are stripped bare on Holy Saturday. When they are revealed in their naked sorrow, the most inspired and elaborate of altar cloths are made to seem guilty of obscuring holy stone.
I've not been to mass, but my thoughts have been with the season. I peek into the doors of churches when they are open. I bless myself in the street.
In celebration of Holy Week, I offer the following selection from The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion by Leo Steinberg:
( Roger van der Weyden's Crucifixion... )
As a compositional artifice, this banner loincloth is an inspired invention. It resolves a pictorial problem posed by conventional Crucifixion designs - the problem of vacant flanks in the middle zone of the field between crossbeam and horizon. By means of a gorgeous flutter flaring forth from the center, the blanks are repleted and animated; and so felicitous is the solution that its aptness on grounds other than formal has never been challenged. No one has questioned the wisdom of making such pageantry of a breechcloth; or grudged its turbulence as a wind gauge where no breath is stirring; nor its plausibility in a narrative that calls for the least covering of a victim whose garments are the coveted loot of his executioners.
The full deployment of this invention, as of so many, appears to be due to Roger van der Weyden (Campin perhaps cooperating...). In several of Roger's Crucifixions, the spare aprons of the earlier masters unfurl into flying banners, buoyed up by an indwelling breeze where all else is becalmed. By 1500, these streamers winging the sacred loins glorify most German crucifixes... - often over-abundantly, as if less were lèse majesté. Yet, ostensibly, still a loincloth. Only the inherent metaphoricity of Renaissance realism could exalt this humblest of garments to such efflorescence, and convert the ostentatio genitalium decently into a fanfare of cosmic triumph.
Christ, dying, graced us with innumerable examples. The sartorial lesson, though it may be least among them, still should not be forgotten. What you wear matters less than the manner in which you wear it. I like frivolous morals, and I would count this among them if the churches themselves did not seem to remember it. Altars are stripped bare on Holy Saturday. When they are revealed in their naked sorrow, the most inspired and elaborate of altar cloths are made to seem guilty of obscuring holy stone.
