I will always remember Charles Laughton’s lament in The Hunchback of Notre Dame as he embraces a terrifying gargoyle…”would that I were made of stone, like thee.” This week as Notre Dame Cathedral burned before our eyes our hearts were broken as ancient timbers and stones fell away to dust.
Sacred art is unique among all arts in that it is an act of devotion first and foremost. The art of the sacred destroys limitations and transcends the building materials of every medium. When you see the Pieta for example, the last thing that comes to mind is the stone that is at its heart. The first things are suffering, pathos and a mother’s love. When the medium doesn’t matter and the message resonates we are in the presence of true art. No sacred artist lacks passion and energy as they create works that are the result of spiritual effort. They are studies of the relationship between man and God.
I recently spent a day at the Valley of the Kings in Egypt and in every King’s tomb the wonders of devotional art are displayed. The brilliant paintings and decorations were never meant to be seen…the artists were content with performing magnificent acts of devotion for their own sake…the audience didn’t matter, the creation of beauty did.
Above all, the Cathedral was a tool to aid the devotion of believers and an act of faith by the artists. Audience-as a concept-comes of age later in the Italian Renaissance that was a flurry of commissions and competition. The proper study of man ceases to be the relationship with the creator and becomes a meditation on man, per se. Michaelangelo’s David is a quintessentially modern work, while the rose windows of the twelfth century are windows on the divine.
St. Paul famously suggested that our vision is likely to be per speculum aenigmate- through a glass darkly- and our ability to see and understand the divine will remain limited. The artists of Notre Dame sought to create the lenses that might assist us in focusing our limited vision.
As Notre Dame burned, all this came in a rush. This who were not in heart pain were truly made of stone. The church was the observatory of its time and the object of its view was the divine. We must restore it and continue to explore the spiritual cosmos. It is our destiny.
For the artist of Notre Dame the words of old Henry Miller might resonate: ” true strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself.” I hope we all learn this before everything turns to stone.
Olio Folio 