Catholic World, Vol. 24, October, 1876, to March, 1877: A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science — John Shaqi
Catholic World, Vol. 24, October, 1876, to March, 1877: A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and ScienceVarious
Religion
Catholic World, Vol. 24, October, 1876, to March, 1877: A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
At the further end of one of the art-adorned sacristies hangs Pedro de
Campaña’s famous “Descent from the Cross,” before which Murillo loved
to meditate, especially in his last days. Joseph of Arimathea and
Nicodemus, in deep-red mantles, let down the dead Christ. St. John
stands at the foot ready to receive him. The Virgin is half fainting.
Magdalen is there with her vase. The figures are a little stiff, but
their attitudes are expressive of profound grief, and the picture is
admirable in coloring and religious in effect, as well as interesting
from its associations. It was once considered so awful that Pacheco
was afraid to remain before it after dark. But those were days of
profound religious feeling; now men are afraid of nothing. And it was
so full of reality to Murillo that, one evening, lingering longer than
usual before it, the sacristan came to warn him it was time to close
the church. “I am waiting,” said the pious artist, rousing from his
contemplation, “till those holy men shall have finished taking down
the body of the Lord.” The painting then hung in the church of Santa
Cruz, and Murillo was buried beneath it. This was destroyed by Marshal
Soult, and the bones of the artist scattered.
In the same sacristy hang, on opposite walls, St. Leander and his
brother Isidore, by Murillo, both with noble heads. The latter is the
most popular saint in Spain after St. James, and is numbered among the
fathers of the church. Among the twelve burning suns, circling in the
fourth heaven of Dante’s Paradiso, is “the arduous spirit of Isidore,”
whom the great Alcuin long before called “Hesperus, the star of the
church――_Jubar Ecclesiæ, sidus Hesperiæ_.” The Venerable Bede classes
him with Jerome, Athanasius, Augustine, and Cyprian; and it was after
dictating some passages from St. Isidore that he died.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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