Catholic Hotdish

Bancel LaFarge designed this window of St. Clare in the Cathedral of St. Paul using the methods he learned from his father, famous East Coast artist John LaFarge. Photo by Dave Hrbacek / The Catholic Spirit

East Coast churches have dazzling stained glass, but so does our Cathedral of St. Paul

They looked like fused gobs of chunky carnival candy, so brilliantly hued that, for a moment, I wanted to pry out a piece and pop it in my mouth.

Good thing I didn’t: It was glass.

In June I spent a week poking around some of America’s most magnificent Victorian homes in Newport, R.I.

I went hoping to deepen my knowledge about the era’s architecture (which I did), but my attention easily strayed from cornices and balustrades to the stained glass windows decorating a handful of the homes and churches I visited.

This was not ordinary stained glass. Instead of employing traditional methods, these were among the first “opalescent” glass windows. Previously, artists painted colored windows with dark paint to add detail or filter light within the glass. Opalescent glass is made containing gradations of density and color, diminishing the need for paint. The result is glass that appears to have its own texture, movement and, well, life, in contrast to its rather stoic predecessor.

Many of the windows I saw also had “gems” fused with the panes — the previously mentioned dollops, sometimes smooth, sometimes harshly faceted, that captured my eye.

Later, I discovered that this glass fathered the treasures in — literally — my own St. Paul backyard.

An American artist

The man credited for this design revolution was John LaFarge (1835-1910), a New York City-born artist who earned his chops while studying with painter William Morris Hunt in Newport.

LaFarge’s earliest work graces several of the city’s landmarks, and later pieces show up in grand homes and small churches throughout New England.

Both a painter and artist, LaFarge, a Catholic, received his big break when he offered to design the interior of Boston’s Episcopalian Trinity Church, which was designed by architect Henry Hobson Richardson. The 1877 structure is credited — inside and out — for inspiring a truly “American” aesthetic at a time when the centennial-celebrating nation was seeking to identify who, exactly, it was.

For LaFarge, the rest was history. His glass technique was soon adopted by Louis Comfort Tiffany (famous for his windows and lamps), who was better able to market the stuff than LaFarge (who, unfortunately, earned a reputation for not finishing work in a timely manner and for digging himself into debt).

Some of LaFarge’s best work is in churches, and radiant images of angels, saints and biblical figures have long drawn his admirers — both religious and secular — into houses of God, if only for a moment.

Connection to local treasure

As I examined the particularities of LaFarge’s glass design, I noticed some striking similarities to some familiar Twin Cities windows — the backs of which I can see from my desk at The Catholic Spirit.

The way the figures’ clothing folded and draped over their heads and arms, the gradation of light, the thoughtful expressions — they reminded me of the series of saint windows in the Cathedral of St. Paul’s Shrine of Nations.

Sure enough. Well, almost.

It was not John LaFarge who designed the 12 windows that dramatically light the Cathedral’s chevet, but rather his son, Bancel.

When the windows were created in 1927-28, the senior LaFarge had passed away, and Bancel had achieved success in his own right. His Cathedral commission was undoubtedly aided by the fact that a childhood friend in Newport — a butler’s son named Austin Dowling — was currently archbishop of St. Paul.

Six shrines comprise the Shrine of Nations to honor six ethnic groups whose immigrants were the city’s earliest Catholics. Each shrine has two Bancel LaFarge windows, each depicting a saint. (His initials “BLaF” adorn a few of them.)

My favorite is St. Clare of Assisi in the Italian chapel. As in her typical depictions, she holds a ciborium containing the Eucharist. Legend holds that she brought the Eucharist to her convent’s gates when it was threatened by looters, and the whole town was spared. She’s also usually shown garbed in brown robes typical of a Franciscan.

But not in Bancel’s mind.

Her veil is green, her mantle is orange, and her gown is awash in purples and greens. Framed by a rose-hued halo, her face bears a pensive expression as she looks over her shoulder.

A visual, spiritual treat

Nearby, her male counterpart, St. Francis, also wears colorful robes as he gazes at the sun and moon, evoking the way he imagined all creation — including “brother Sun and sister Moon” — praising God.

“Perhaps the artist wished to evoke the beauty of lives lived in perfect dependence on and submission to God,” author Dia Boyle writes in “Stone and Glass: The Meaning of the Cathedral of St. Paul,” published in 2008.

I don’t know what Bancel was thinking when he cast aside the traditional for the unexpected. But I suspect, as Boyle does, that it was done in devotion. He was  a devout Catholic who invested in Catholic organizations, including a three-year stint as president of the Liturgical Arts Society of America.

Bancel also designed the windows for the Cathedral’s Sacred Heart chapel, as well as the murals and windows for St. Mary’s Chapel at the St. Paul Seminary.

Like John LaFarge, Bancel had the ability to present long-depicted themes in surprising ways, casting an even greater beauty in a place where it was already to be found. His glass lacks the signature candy-like medallions of his father’s work, but it’s just as delicious to the mind and eye.

School Sister of Notre Dame Mary Ann Osborne holds her artwork “Sanctuary” as she stands in her Mankato studio.

People don’t usually think of Michelangelo as a modern artist.

He’s known for his frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, the marble “Pietà” in St. Peter’s Basilica and St. Peter’s dome that dominates the eastern Roman skyline.

But it’s partly a Michelangelo sculpture that inspired Sister Mary Ann Osborne to create the contemporary wooden artworks that fill her Mankato studio and grace several churches, including Holy Rosary in Minneapolis and Pax Christi in Eden Prairie.

Known as the “Pietà Rondanini,” it was one of several pietà statues carved by the Renaissance artist. It was also his last; Michelangelo worked on it just days before his death in 1564.

Most historians consider this pietà an unfinished work because it lacks the smooth polishing and intricate dealing of his other work.

Sister Mary Ann thinks it may be otherwise: a modern piece before its time.

In it, Mary holds the crucified Christ vertically, his head resting on her shoulder. The marble is rough and tool marked, the faces undefined. A disconnected arm is suspended in front of Christ, revealing that Michaelangelo either changed his mind or reused another piece.

“I love more primitive pieces; they bring out the essence of what something is about,” she said. “Maybe that’s why I was attracted to Michelangelo’s piece, because it is more primitive.”

Mary and Jesus’ chests are touching, she pointed out, as if their hearts are connected. “It always spoke to me as something that [Michelangelo] knew at the end of his life that was different than when he was a young person,” she told me as she sat in her studio, surrounded by her art, raw wood and tools.

Professed for 35 years as a School Sister of Notre Dame, Sister Mary Ann has been making art for about 25 years. She works mostly in wood, but her sculptures also include glass, tile, paint and metal. Many of her pieces are large, and all of them are inspired by her Catholic faith.

“It’s really ancient truths told in new ways,” she said. “I cannot really separate who I am and how I pray from my art, because it’s one and how God speaks to me.”

‘Custodians of beauty’

On Nov. 21, Pope Benedict XVI hosted more than 250 international artists in the Sistine Chapel, where he invited them and their work into a deeper relationship with the church.

“Remember that you are the custodians of beauty in the world,” he told them.

For centuries, the church was the greatest patron of the arts, but in the last few centuries that relationship has waned, giving way to a growing disconnect between contemporary art and the church.

I haven’t always connected with it, either. Truth be told, for a long time, I detested modern and contemporary art.

I mean, it looks weird, right?

Its abstracted or stylized forms are confusing, and I’m often frustrated by my inability to immediately understand the message the artist is conveying. At first glance, some of it can look unrefined and childish.

However, I’ve changed my mind.

I’ve learned to appreciate the challenge of contemporary art, the way it coaxes me to really think about  what I’m seeing.

Earlier art doesn’t always do that. Unfortunately, it can be easy to gloss over a medieval “Annunciation” painting, because its scene and meaning are so painstakingly clear.

However, a modern “Annuncia­tion,” like the one in Sister Mary Ann’s studio, compels me to pause to consider the symbolism, to ask why the artist painted something in that way.

“I want to help people see things in a new way, or a deeper way,” Sister Mary Ann said.

His own relationship with art persuaded Pope Paul VI to inaugurate the Vatican Museums’ Collection of Modern Religious Art in 1973.

“We need you,” he had told artists in 1964 at a Sistine Chapel gathering strikingly similar to that of Benedict XVI. “We need your collaboration in order to carry out our ministry, which consists, as you know, in preaching and rendering accessible and comprehensible to the minds and hearts of our people the things of the spirit, the invisible, the ineffable, the things of God himself.”

Pope Benedict XVI reiterated these words Nov. 21, urging the artists not to seek “mere aestheticism,” but rather authentic beauty that liberates mankind from darkness and transfigures it, “unlocking the yearning of the human heart

. . . to reach for the Beyond,” ultimately spurring the heart toward God.

“Faith takes nothing away from your genius or your art,” he said. “On the contrary, it exalts them and nourishes them, it encourages them to cross the threshold and to contemplate with fascination and emotion the ultimate and definitive goal, the sun that does not set, the sun that illumines this present moment and makes it beautiful.”

As much as an exhortation to artists, the pope’s words are also an invitation to viewers: Don’t so easily write off the works of contemporary artists. Search out the beautiful, the true and the good within the works. Ask what they can teach you, and then be taught.