The Last Supper

original digitized image

original digitized image

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How Leonardo da Vinci

pictured the Last Supper

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The Last Supper (1494-1498) by Leonardo da Vinci
in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan

During the bitter-cold first week in February, I went to snow-bound Milan to write stories about an annual world-class food-and-wine event called “IdentitàGolose” and Milan University’s Library and Archive of Egyptology. With great good luck (because the obligatory reservations made online via www.milan-museum.com often have a two-month backlog), I was able to squeeze in a same-day visit, which lasts barely 15 minutes, to see Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, The Last Supper, one of his 17 paintings and the only one not on canvas. I’d seen it only once before, almost 50 years ago. Just a month before Easter, I thought I’d share with ITV readers the unique way polymath Leonardo (1452-1519), a sculptor, architect, musician, draftsman, scientist, mathematician, engineer, anatomist, geologist, and cartographer, as well as painter, pictured this prelude to Our Savior’s sacrifice by telling this spellbinding mural’s story.

A self-portrait of Da Vinci depicted as the Apostle Jude Thaddeus

THE PAINTING

In 1482, Leonardo da Vinci, then 30, left Tuscany to be the court painter for Duke Ludovico Sforza (1451-1508) and his wife Duchess Beatrice d’Este (1475-1497) in Milan. A decade or so later, his patron commissioned Leonardo to paint The Last Supper as the centerpiece of his planned mausoleum in the monastery of the recently-completed Dominican Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, which was later remodeled by Bramante, also the architect of St. Peter’s Basilica. Leonardo began work, which was supposed to take a year, in 1494, but did not complete the painting until 1498. According to Wikipedia’s article about Leonardo, “the novelist Matteo Bandello observed Leonardo at work and wrote that some days he would paint from dawn to dusk without stopping to eat and then not paint for three or four days at a time. This was beyond the comprehension of the prior of the convent, who hounded him until Leonardo

asked Ludovico to intervene. Vasari describes how Leonardo, troubled over his ability to depict the faces of Christ and Judas (Iscariot), told the Duke that he might be obliged to use the prior as his ‘model’ for Judas.”

It is generally believed that the white-bearded Apostle on the right of the painting, Jude Thaddeus, is the artist’s self-portrait.

Leonardo also probably cryptically “signed” this work; the knot at the end of the tablecloth’s right-hand edge represents the Latin word for knot, vincium.

An earlier version of the scene: The Last Supper by Ghirlandaio (1482). Located in Florence

LEONARDO’S CONCEPTION

The Last Supper theme was a traditional one for refectories, although this room wasn’t a refectory at the time Leonardo painted his masterpiece on the north wall. His work of art represents the Last Supper as told in the Gospel of John 13:21, when Jesus announces that one of his twelve Apostles would betray him before sunrise, but does not reveal which one. We know that Leonardo studied earlier paintings by Ghirlandaio and Andrea del Castagno with traditional iconography that focuses instead on the moment of the traitor’s identification, when Judas, who is represented in an isolated position with respect to the other Apostles, receives a piece of bread from Jesus and dips it in his dish. Leonardo, however, preferred the moment prior to this, dominated by doubt. His is the first version of this theme with the Apostles displaying the human emotions of doubt, shock, fear, and anger through the expressions on their faces, the movements of their hands, and their body language, which contrast with Jesus’ calmness. It should also be mentioned that the daylight and unbroken bread confirm that it is too early for Judas to have been identified as the traitor.

Giacomo Raffaelli’s life-size mosaic copy of Leonardo’s
Last Supper (1809-14), now in Vienna’s Minoritenkirche

TECHNIQUE

A wall panel in the entrance to the refectory explains: “Leonardo creates a sense of continuity between the actual space of the refectory and the painted space through an exceptional use of perspective, which has Christ’s right temple as its vanishing point; all the lines of perspective in the composition guide the viewer’s eye towards Jesus’ face, the narrative center of the work.” Leonardo’s early ideas, both notes and preparatory drawings, for this painting are illustrated in a sheet of figure studies, no. 12542r, conserved in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle.

Another first is that Leonardo’s Judas is not seated as is customary with his back to the viewer and, unlike the other well-lit Apostles, is in a shadow. He is also holding a purse. Although he would not yet have received the 30 silver coins, he was the treasurer for the Apostles. Until The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci were discovered during the 19th century, only Judas, Peter, John and Jesus could be positively identified.

The painting contains several references to the number 3 or the Blessed Trinity. The Apostles are seated in groups of three: to the left of Jesus (from the viewer’s point of view): Bartholomew, James the Lesser, and Andrew; Peter, Judas Iscariot, and John; to the right of Jesus: Thomas, James the Greater, and Philip; Matthew, Jude Thaddeus, and Simon the Zealot; there are three windows behind Jesus; and the shape of Jesus’ figure resembles a triangle.

MEDIUM

Also unique to The Last Supper is the medium Leonardo, always the inventor, used. According to Wikipedia, “he painted it on a dry wall rather than on wet plaster, so it is not a true fresco. Since a fresco cannot be modified as the artist works, Leonardo instead chose to seal the stone wall with a layer of pitch, gesso, and mastic, then paint onto the sealing layer with tempera.” Because of the method he used so that he, a known procrastinator with a marked tendency to leave projects unfinished, could make changes, his masterpiece began to deteriorate after a few years. The only evidence we have of what the original painting looked like is a 16th-century oil canvas by an unknown artist, in approximately original size, now housed in the Premonstratensian monastery, founded in 1128, at Tongerlo in Westerlo near Antwerp in Belgium. The copy reveals many details that are no longer visible in the original fresco, in particular the food, the room’s décor, and the landscape. Between 1809 and 1814 the Roman mosaic artist Giacomo Raffaelli made another life-size copy, commissioned by Napoleon and now in the Viennese Minoritenkirche.

The Last Supper by Dalí

DETERIORATION

In 1517, Don Antonio de Beatis was the first to testify that Leonardo’s painting “is already beginning to be damaged.” Some 50 years later, in 1566, Leonardo’s biographer Giorgio Vasari wrote in his Lives: “Of the original by Leonardo (…) one can now perceive only a glaring stain.” A century later, the Dominican Fathers enlarged the door at the center of the wall that connected the refectory to the kitchen, which, although later bricked up, is still visible. It eliminated the part that depicted Christ’s feet, which, through early copies, were supposedly in a position symbolizing his forthcoming crucifixion. Further damage was done in 1768 when a curtain was hung over the painting to protect it; instead it trapped moisture on the surface, and whenever pulled back, scratched the flaking paint. In 1722, an English traveler testified that the rough wall was visible in various parts of the “fresco.” In 1799, when Napoleon’s troops turned the refectory into a stable and barn, the painting suffered still further vandalism. The soldiers passed their free time throwing stones at the painting and climbed ladders to scratch out the Apostles’ eyes. In 1812, the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie was used as a headquarters by the fire brigade and subsequently as a military barracks. In 1934, the refectory became a state museum, while the church and the cloisters were returned to the Dominicans. During the Second World War, on the night of August 15, 1943, a bomb struck the cloisters, causing the collapse of the refectory’s vault and its east wall. The Last Supper was saved from bomb splinters thanks to sandbags put in place at the start of the war. After a long period of “open air,” the collapsed parts of the refectory were rebuilt in 1947.

The Last Supper by Andy Warhol

RESTORATION

The Last Supper by Andy Warhol

A first restoration was attempted in 1726 by Michelangelo Bellotti, who filled in missing sections with oil paint and then varnished the whole mural; many others followed over the next two centuries. By the end of the 1970s the painting’s appearance had so badly deteriorated that, from 1978 to 1999, Pinin Brambilla Barcilon guided a major restoration project, which, in a sealed, climate-controlled ambience, undertook to stabilize the painting permanently and reverse the damage caused by dirt, pollution and the misguided 18th- and 19th- century restoration attempts. On May 28th, 1999, the painting was put back on display.

In 1980, UNESCO made the Santa Maria delle Grazie complex and The Last Supper a World Heritage site.

SPECULATIONS

Perhaps because of its deteriorated state, Leonardo’s Last Supper has been the target of much speculation by historians and writers, usually centered around purported hidden messages within the painting.

Several examples follow:

1) The Templar Revelation (1997) by Lynn Pickett and Clive Prince and The Da Vinci Code (2003) by Dan Brown both identify the person seated at Jesus’s right hand not as John the Apostle, but as a woman, and none other than Mary Magdalene, who supposedly bore Christ’s child after his death. It is true that the beardless John looks quite effeminate, but he was much younger than the other Apostles except for Phillip and maybe Matthew, both of whom are beardless here, too, while the others all have beards. Moreover, the Bible never mentions Mary Magdalene as present at the Last Supper, and if John is Mary, then where is John?

2) According to an article by Matthew Moore published on July 30, 2007 in The Telegraph, Slavisa Pesci, “an information technologist and amateur scholar,” superimposed Leonardo’s version of The Last Supper on its mirror image (with both images of Jesus lined up) and claimed that the resultant picture has a Templar Knight on the far left, a woman dressed in orange and holding a swaddled baby in her arms to the left of Jesus, and the Holy Grail in the form of a chalice in front of Jesus. With the naked eye no chalice is visible, although Jesus’ left hand is pointing to the Eucharist and his right to a glass of wine.

3) Giovanni Maria Pala, an Italian musician, has indicated that the positions of the hands and loaves of bread can be interpreted as notes on a musical staff, and, if read from right to left (because Leonardo was left-handed), form a musical composition.

4) Reported by British Vatican correspondent Richard Owen in an article entitled, “Da Vinci ‘predicted the world would end in 4066’ says Vatican researcher” in the London Times on March 15, 2010, is the most far-fetched of all theories. Sabrina Sforza Galitzia claimed to have deciphered the “mathematical and astrological” puzzle in Leonardo’s The Last Supper. She said that Leonardo foresaw the end of the world in a “universal flood” which would begin on March 21, 4006, and end on November 1 the same year. Leonardo believed that this would mark “a new start for humanity.”

The Last Supper by Escobar

Leonardo’s Last Supper is open all day Tuesday to Sunday from 8:15 AM to 7 PM with a maximum group of 25 people admitted every 15 minutes. Closed Mondays and on January 1st, May 1st, and Christmas Day. My same-day ticket, reserved by my hotel, cost 8 euros.

Epilogue

If you can’t make it to Milan, in Room VIII of the Pinocateca in the Vatican Museums there’s a Flemish tapestry of the Last Supper designed by Raphael, and in Raphael’s loggia on the second floor of the Apostolic Palace, one of the frescoes executed by Raphael’s workshop from 1517-19 is of the Last Supper. One of the frescoes on the northern wall of the Sistine Chapel, devoted to scenes from the life of Jesus and painted by Cosimo Rosselli (1431-1507) in 1481-2, also depicts the Last Supper.

There are several modern renditions of the Last Supper in the US. In 1955, Salvador Dalí painted The Sacrament of the Last Supper, one of the most popular paintings in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Sculptor Marisol Escobar was inspired by Leonardo’s Last Supper. Her work is in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. And in 1986, Andy Warhol was commissioned to produce a series of paintings based on The Last Supper. They were first exhibited in a bank across the street from Santa Maria delle Grazie. This was Warhol’s last series of paintings before his death. On loan from the Andy Warhol Museum in his hometown of Pittsburgh, one of Warhol’s many paintings of The Last Supper (the Museum, at 117 Sandusky Street, owns three others) will take part in the traveling exhibition of 300 works “Andy Warhol: 15 Minutes Eternal” to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the artist’s death. The exhibition opened at the ArtScience Museum, Marina Bay Sands, in Singapore on March 17 and will travel to five other Asian cities: Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, and Tokyo, over the next 27 months.

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POEMS

The Last Supper, by Lydia Sigourney

The Last Supper, by Jack Stewart

The Last Supper, by Rainer Maria Rilke

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10 Secrets of The Last Supper

by Leonardo da Vinci

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The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci

In 1495, Leonardo da Vinci began what would become one of history's most influential works of art - The Last Supper

The Last Supper is Leonardo's visual interpretation of an event chronicled in all four of the Gospels (books in the Christian New Testament). The evening before Christ was betrayed by one of his disciples, he gathered them together to eat, tell them he knew what was coming and wash their feet (a gesture symbolizing that all were equal under the eyes of the Lord). As they ate and drank together, Christ gave the disciples explicit instructions on how to eat and drink in the future, in remembrance of him. It was the first celebration of the Eucharist, a ritual still performed.

Specifically, The Last Supper depicts the next few seconds in this story after Christ dropped the bombshell that one disciple would betray him before sunrise, and all twelve have reacted to the news with different degrees of horror, anger, and shock.

Leonardo hadn't worked on such a large painting and had no experience in the standard mural medium of fresco. The painting was made using experimental pigments directly on the dry plaster wall and unlike frescos, where the pigments are mixed with the wet plaster, it has not stood the test of time well. Even before it was finished there were problems with the paint flaking from the wall and Leonardo had to repair it. Over the years it has crumbled, been vandalized bombed and restored. Today we are probably looking at very little of the original.

Much of the recent interest in the painting has centered on the details hidden within the painting, but in directing attention to these 'hidden' details, most people miss the incredible sense of perspective the work displays. The sharp angling of the walls within the picture, which leads back to the seemingly distant back wall of the room and the windows that show the hills and sky beyond. The type of day shown through these windows adds to the feeling of serenity that rests in the center of the piece, around the figure of Christ.

The Layout of The Last Supper

The Last Supper Perspective

Leonardo balanced the perspective construction of the Last Supper so that its vanishing point is immediately behind Christ's right temple, pointing to the physical location of the center, or sensus communis, of his brain. By pulling a string in radial directions from this point, he marked the table ends, floor lines, and orthogonal edges of the six ceiling coffer columns. From the right and/or left edge of the horizon line, he drew diagonal lines up to the coffer corners, locating points for the horizontal lines of the 12 coffer rows.

Leonardo was well known for his love of symmetry. In his Last Supper, the layout is largely horizontal. The large table is seen in the foreground of the image with all of the figures behind it. The painting is largely symmetrical with the same number of figures on either side of Jesus. The above diagram shows how the perspective the Last Super was worked out with a series of marks at key points highlighting the architectural aspects of the composition and positioning of the figures.

10 Facts You Might not

Know about the Masterpiece

1. Who's who in "The Last Supper"

Who's who in the Last Supper

2. The secret of "The Last Supper"

The Last Supper is a very popular religious scene painted by many celebrated artists. Unlike artists before and after him, Leonardo da Vinci chose not to put halos on Jusus Christ. Many art historians believe that Leonardo da Vinci believe in nature, not in God. To Leonardo, nature is God, so he treated every character in the fresco as common people.

3. "Last Supper" is a failed experiment.

Unlike traditional frescoes, which Renaissance masters painted on wet plaster walls, Leonardo experimented with tempura paint on a dry, sealed plaster wall in the Santa Maria delle Grazie monastery in Milan, Italy. The experiment proved unsuccessful, however, because the paint did not adhere properly and began to flake away only a few decades after the work was finished.

4. The spilled salt is symbolic.

Speculations about symbolism in the artwork are plentiful. For example, many scholars have discussed the meaning of the spilled salt container near Judas's elbow. Spilled salt could symbolize bad luck, loss, religion, or Jesus as salt of the earth.

5. Eel or herring?

Scholars have also remarked on da Vinci's choice of food. They dispute whether the fish on the table is herring or eel since each carries its own symbolic meaning. In Italian, the word for eel is "aringa." The similar word, "arringa," means to indoctrinate. In northern Italian dialect, the word for herring is "renga," which also describes someone who denies religion. This would fit with Jesus' biblical prediction that his apostle Peter would deny knowing him.

6. Da Vinci used a hammer and nail to help him to achieve the one-point perspective.

What makes the masterpiece so striking is the perspective from which it's painted, which seems to invite the viewer to step right into the dramatic scene. To achieve this illusion, da Vinci hammered a nail into the wall, then tied string to it to make marks that helped guide his hand in creating the painting's angles.

7. The existing mural is not 100% da Vinci's work.

At the end of the 20th century, restorer Panin Brambilla Barcilon and his crew relied on microscopic photographs, core samples, infrared reflectoscopy and sonar to remove the added layers of paint and restore the original as accurately as possible. Critics maintain that only a fraction of the painting that exists today is the work of Leonardo da Vinci.

8. Three early copies of the original exist.

Three of da Vinci's students, including Giampietrino, made copies of his painting early in the 16th century. Giampietrino did a full-scale copy that is now in London's Royal Academy of Arts. This oil painting on canvas was the primary resource for the latest restoration of the work. The second copy by Andrea Solari is in the Leonardo da Vinci Museum in Belgium while the third copy by Cesare da Sesto is in the Church of Saint Ambrogio in Switzerland.

The Last Supper Copy - by Giampietrino

9. The painting is also a musical score.

According to Italian musician Giovanni Maria Pala, da Vinci incorporated musical notes in "The Last Supper." In 2007, Pala created a 40-second melody from the notes that were allegedly hidden in the scene.

10. The painting has been a victim of neglect and abuse.

In 1652, monastery residents cut a new door in the wall of the deteriorating painting, which removed a chunk of the artwork showing the feet of Jesus. Late in the 18th century, Napoleon Bonaparte's soldiers turned the area into a stable and further damaged the wall with projectiles. During World War II, the Nazis bombed the monastery, reducing surrounding walls to rubble.

The Stations of the Cross - Devotionals & Meaning

DEVOTIONALS & MEANING

by Anon

The Stations of the Cross began as a remembrance that pilgrims had when they were retracing Jesus’ final steps in Jerusalem up to the hill where He was crucified. Wanting to that practice and experience with people who couldn’t’ make the trip to Jerusalem, earnest pilgrims created local stations of meditation that became in itself a tradition.

This journey to the cross is not only a meditation of Jesus accomplishing what He came to do – the redemption of humanity thought his own willful sacrifice – but it’s also a contemplation of Jesus silently participating in some of the worst aspects of being human. We see Jesus b3eing tempted to give up.; betrayed by a friend; be unjustly convicted by religious priests of God before a foreign civil government and corrupt political system. Physical pain. Mockery. Public humiliation. Broken family relationships. And one of our greatest fears… having to die. These are all aspects of human life that He was not insulated from… in fact, on the cross Jesus quotes King David saying “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?... as if to say, “Why is it like this?” He was one who was separate from our own forms of suffering.

Many of us feel the weight of anxiety and fear as we journey through the current world. We are told many narratives of how it is and what is to come. During this season of Lent, we, as a community, look to the life and teachings of Jesus. We think that One who was in the midst of such political and empirical turmoil, who spoke the words of “Be not afraid”… and “Come to me all who are weary and carry heavy burdens, for I will give you rest”… is someone who can illuminate our desperate lives so often despoiled by sin and evil both through us and through others.

These stations are a cross-section of elements, ideas, and objects from Jesus’ journey to the cross of Calvary raised upon Golgotha’s Hill. As we work through these stations may we see that we are not troubled guests living without God’s presence in our lives in this world… nor that we are not forsaken… but that we bear the good news of Easter in us and with us. As Jesus had said,

“I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” 

 

click to enlarge

STATIONS OF THE CROSS

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/tag/stations-of-the-cross/

I Jesus is condemned to death

The very air that Pilate breathes, the voice

With which he speaks in judgment, all his powers

Of perception and discrimination, choice,

Decision, all his years, his days and hours,

His consciousness of self, his every sense,

Are given by this prisoner, freely given.

The man who stands there making no defence,

Is God. His hands are tied, His heart is open.

And he bears Pilate’s heart in his and feels

That crushing weight of wasted life. He lifts

It up in silent love. He lifts and heals.

He gives himself again with all his gifts

Into our hands. As Pilate turns away

A door swings open. This is judgment day.

II Jesus is given his cross

He gives himself again with all his gifts

And now we give him something in return.
He gave the earth that bears, the air that lifts,
Water to cleanse and cool, fire to burn,
And from these elements he forged the iron,
From strands of life he wove the growing wood,
He made the stones that pave the roads of Zion
He saw it all and saw that it is good.
We took his iron to edge an axe’s blade,
We took the axe and laid it to the tree,
We made a cross of all that he has made,
And laid it on the one who made us free.
Now he receives again and lifts on high
The gifts he gave and we have turned awry.

III Jesus falls the first time

He made the stones that pave the roads of Zion
And well he knows the path we make him tread
He met the devil as a roaring lion
And still refused to turn these stones to bread,
Choosing instead, as Love will always choose,
This darker path into the heart of pain.
And now he falls upon the stones that bruise
The flesh, that break and scrape the tender skin.
He and the earth he made were never closer,
Divinity and dust come face to face.
We flinch back from his via dolorosa,
He sets his face like flint and takes our place,
Staggers beneath the black weight of us all
And falls with us that he might break our fall.

IV Jesus meets His Mother

This darker path into the heart of pain
Was also hers whose love enfolded him
In flesh and wove him in her womb. Again
The sword is piercing. She, who cradled him
And gentled and protected her young son
Must stand and watch the cruelty that mars
Her maiden making. Waves of pain that stun
And sicken pass across his face and hers
As their eyes meet. Now she enfolds the world
He loves in prayer; the mothers of the disappeared
Who know her pain, all bodies bowed and curled
In desperation on this road of tears,
All the grief-stricken in their last despair,
Are folded in the mantle of her prayer.

V Simon of Cyrene carries the cross

In desperation on this road of tears
Bystanders and bypassers turn away
In other’s pain we face our own worst fears
And turn our backs to keep those fears at bay
Unless we are compelled as this man was
By force of arms or force of circumstance
To face and feel and carry someone’s cross
In Love’s full glare and not his backward glance.
So Simon, no disciple, still fulfilled
The calling: ‘take the cross and follow me’.
By accident his life was stalled and stilled
Becoming all he was compelled to be.
Make me, like him, your pressed man and your priest,
Your alter Christus, burdened and released.

VI Veronica wipes the face of Jesus

Bystanders and bypassers turn away
And wipe his image from their memory
She keeps her station. She is here to stay
And stem the flow. She is the reliquary
Of his last look on her. The bloody sweat
And salt tears of his love are soaking through
The folds of her devotion and the wet
folds of her handkerchief, like the dew
Of morning, like a softening rain of grace.
Because she wiped the grime from off his skin,
And glimpsed the godhead in his human face
Whose hidden image we all bear within,
Through all our veils and shrouds of daily pain
The face of god is shining once again.

VII Jesus falls the second time

Through all our veils and shrouds of daily pain,
Through our bruised bruises and re-opened scars,
He falls and stumbles with us, hurt again
When we are hurt again. With us he bears
The cruel repetitions of our cruelty;
The beatings of already beaten men,
The second rounds of torture, the futility
Of all unheeded pleading, every scream in vain.
And by this fall he finds the fallen souls
Who passed a first, but failed a second trial,
The souls who thought their faith would hold them whole
And found it only held them for a while.
Be with us when the road is twice as long
As we can bear. By weakness make us strong.

VIII Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem

He falls and stumbles with us, hurt again
But still he holds the road and looks in love
On all of us who look on him. Our pain
As close to him as his. These women move
Compassion in him as he does in them.
He asks us both to weep and not to weep.
Women of Gaza and Jerusalem,
Women of every nation where the deep
Wounds of memory divide the land
And lives of all your children, where the mines
Of all our wars are sown: Afghanistan ,
Iraq, the Cote d’Ivoire… he reads the signs
And weeps with you and with you he will stay
Until the day he wipes your tears away.

IX Jesus falls the third time

He weeps with you and with you he will stay
When all your staying power has run out
You can’t go on, you go on anyway.
He stumbles just beside you when the doubt
That always haunts you, cuts you down at last
And takes away the hope that drove you on.
This is the third fall and it hurts the worst
This long descent through darkness to depression
From which there seems no rising and no will
To rise, or breathe or bear your own heart beat.
Twice you survived; this third will surely kill,
And you could almost wish for that defeat
Except that in the cold hell where you freeze
You find your God beside you on his knees.\

X Jesus is stripped of His garments

You can’t go on, you go on anyway
He goes with you, his cradle to your grave.
Now is the time to loosen, cast away
The useless weight of everything but love
For he began his letting go before,
Before the worlds for which he dies were made,
Emptied himself, became one of the poor,
To make you rich in him and unafraid.
See as they strip the robe from off his back
They strip away your own defences too
Now you could lose it all and never lack
Now you can see what naked Love can do
Let go these bonds beneath whose weight you bow
His stripping strips you both for action now

XI Crucifixion: Jesus is nailed to the cross

See, as they strip the robe from off his back
And spread his arms and nail them to the cross,
The dark nails pierce him and the sky turns black,
And love is firmly fastened onto loss.
But here a pure change happens. On this tree
Loss becomes gain, death opens into birth.
Here wounding heals and fastening makes free
Earth breathes in heaven, heaven roots in earth.
And here we see the length, the breadth, the height
Where love and hatred meet and love stays true
Where sin meets grace and darkness turns to light
We see what love can bear and be and do,
And here our saviour calls us to his side
His love is free, his arms are open wide.

XII Jesus dies on the cross

The dark nails pierce him and the sky turns black
We watch him as he labours to draw breath
He takes our breath away to give it back,
Return it to it’s birth through his slow death.
We hear him struggle breathing through the pain
Who once breathed out his spirit on the deep,
Who formed us when he mixed the dust with rain
And drew us into consciousness from sleep.
His spirit and his life he breathes in all
Mantles his world in his one atmosphere
And now he comes to breathe beneath the pall
Of our pollutions, draw our injured air
To cleanse it and renew. His final breath
Breathes us, and bears us through the gates of death.

XIII Jesus’ body is taken down from the cross

His spirit and his life he breathes in all
Now on this cross his body breathes no more
Here at the centre everything is still
Spent, and emptied, opened to the core.
A quiet taking down, a prising loose
A cross-beam lowered like a weighing scale
Unmaking of each thing that had its use
A long withdrawing of each bloodied nail,
This is ground zero, emptiness and space
With nothing left to say or think or do
But look unflinching on the sacred face
That cannot move or change or look at you.
Yet in that prising loose and letting be
He has unfastened you and set you free.

XIV Jesus is laid in the tomb

Here at the centre everything is still
Before the stir and movement of our grief
Which bears it’s pain with rhythm, ritual,
Beautiful useless gestures of relief.
So they anoint the skin that cannot feel
Soothing his ruined flesh with tender care,
Kissing the wounds they know they cannot heal,
With incense scenting only empty air.
He blesses every love that weeps and grieves
And makes our grief the pangs of a new birth.
The love that’s poured in silence at old graves
Renewing flowers, tending the bare earth,
Is never lost. In him all love is found
And sown with him, a seed in the rich ground.

The Stations of the Cross in Art in Poetry

Mar 2, 2022

Little With Great Love

Journey the Stations of the Cross in a profoundly beautiful way this Lent in art and poetry. The paintings are bold, brilliant, prayerful depictions of the Passion of Christ, and the poetry is a mystical love song to Our Lord. Wherever you are, enter into a sacred time with the Lord through original artwork and poems for the fourteen Stations with readings by the author, Caitlyn Pszonka, set to a reflective musical score.

Stations of the Cross

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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For other uses, see Stations of the Cross (disambiguation).

"Via Crucis" redirects here. For the composition by Franz Liszt, see Via crucis (Liszt).

The 12th Station of the Cross: Jesus dies on the Cross – St. Raphael's Cathedral (Dubuque, Iowa)

The style, form, and placement of the stations vary widely. The typical stations are small plaques with reliefs or paintings placed around a church nave. Modern minimalist stations can be simple crosses with abl numeral in the centre.^[4][5] Occasionally the faithful might say the stations of the cross without there being any image, such as when the pope leads the stations of the cross around the Colosseum in Rome on Good Friday.^[6]The Stations of the Cross or the Way of the Cross, also known as the Way of Sorrows or the Via Crucis, refers to a series of images depicting Jesus Christ on the day of his crucifixion an^[1] As a physical devotion involving standing, kneeling and genuflections, the Stations of the Cross are tied with the Christian themes of repentance and mortification of the flesh.^[2][3]

History

Three chapels of Verkiai Calvary

Station of the Cross in the Shrine of Our Lady of Fátima, in Portugal

“The way of the Cross” by Gennadiy Jerszow - 15 relief images (bronze) Basilica of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Gdańsk, Poland

Outdoor station in Jiřetín pod Jedlovou

Typical indoor placement along the nave (Hong Kong Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception)

The Stations of the Cross originated in pilgrimage to Jerusalem and a desire to reproduce the Via Dolorosa. Imitating holy places was not a new concept. For example, the religious complex of Santo Stefano in Bologna, Italy, replicated the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and other religious sites, including Mount of Olives and Valley of Josaphat.^[7]

After the siege of 1187, Jerusalem fell to the forces of Saladin, the first sultan of Egypt and Syria. Forty years later Franciscans were allowed back into the Holy Land. Their founder, Saint Francis of Assisi, held the Passion of Christ in special veneration and is said to have been the first person to receive stigmata.^[8] In 1217, St. Francis also founded the Custody of the Holy Land to guard and promote the devotion to holy places. Their efforts were recognized when Franciscans were officially proclaimed custodians of holy places by Pope Clement VI in 1342.^[8] Although several travelers who visited the Holy Land during the 12–14th centuries (e.g. Riccoldo da Monte di Croce, Burchard of Mount Sion, James of Verona), mention a "Via Sacra", i.e. a settled route that pilgrims followed, there is nothing in their accounts to identify this with the Way of the Cross, as we understand it.^[9] The earliest use of the word "stations", as applied to the accustomed halting-places in the Via Sacra at Jerusalem, occurs in the narrative of an English pilgrim, William Wey, who visited the Holy Land in the mid-15th century, and described pilgrims following the footsteps of Christ to Golgotha. In 1521, a book called Geystlich Strass (German: "spiritual road") was printed with illustrations of the stations in the Holy Land.^[9]

During the 15th and 16th centuries the Franciscans began to build a series of outdoor shrines in Europe to duplicate their counterparts in the Holy Land. The number of stations varied between seven and thirty; seven was common. These were usually placed, often in small buildings, along the approach to a church, as in a set of 1490 by Adam Kraft, leading to the Johanniskirche in Nuremberg.^[10] A number of rural examples were established as attractions in their own right, usually on attractive wooded hills. These include the Sacro Monte di Domodossola (1657) and Sacro Monte di Belmonte (1712), and form part of the Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy World Heritage Site, together with other examples on different devotional themes. In these the sculptures are often approaching life-size and very elaborate. Remnants of these are often referred to as calvary hills.

In 1686, in answer to their petition, Pope Innocent XI granted to the Franciscans the right to erect stations within their churches. In 1731, Pope Clement XII extended to all churches the right to have the stations, provided that a Franciscan father erected them, with the consent of the local bishop. At the same time the number was fixed at fourteen. In 1857, the bishops of England were allowed to erect the stations by themselves, without the intervention of a Franciscan priest, and in 1862 this right was extended to bishops throughout the church.^[11]

Stations

A set of the traditional 14 scenes from Portuguese Church, Kolkata

A set of the traditional 14 scenes in Limoges enamel

The Resurrection of Jesus at the Saint Mary Rawaseneng Prayer Garden, in the Rawaseneng Monastery, Indonesia

The early set of seven scenes was usually numbers 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 11 and 14 from the list below.^[10] The standard set from the late 16th to 20th centuries has consisted of 14 pictures or sculptures depicting the following scenes:^[12][13][14]

1. Jesus is condemned to death
2. Jesus takes up his Cross
3. Jesus falls for the first time
4. Jesus meets his Mother
5. Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the Cross
6. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
7. Jesus falls for the second time
8. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem
9. Jesus falls for the third time
10. Jesus is stripped of his garments (sometimes called the "Division of Robes")
11. Jesus is nailed to the Cross
12. Jesus dies on the Cross
13. Jesus is taken down from the Cross
14. Jesus is laid in the tomb

Although not traditionally part of the Stations, the Resurrection of Jesus is sometimes included as an unofficial fifteenth station.^{[dubious – discuss][15]} One very different version, called the Via Lucis ("Way of Light"), comprising the Fourteen Stations of Light or Stations of the Resurrection, starts Jesus rising from the dead and ends with Pentecost.^[16]

Scriptural form

Main article: Scriptural Way of the Cross

Out of the fourteen traditional Stations of the Cross, only eight have a clear scriptural foundation. Station 4 appears out of order from scripture; Jesus's mother is present at the crucifixion but is only mentioned after Jesus is nailed to the cross and before he dies (between stations 11 and 12). The scriptures contain no accounts whatsoever of any woman wiping Jesus's face nor of Jesus falling as stated in Stations 3, 6, 7 and 9. Station 13 (Jesus's body being taken down off the cross and laid in the arms of his mother Mary) differs from the gospels' record, which states that Joseph of Arimathea took Jesus down from the cross and buried him.

To provide a version of this devotion more closely aligned with the biblical accounts, Pope John Paul II introduced a new form of devotion, called the Scriptural Way of the Cross, on Good Friday 1991. He celebrated that form many times but not exclusively at the Colosseum in Italy,^[17][18] using the following sequence (as published by the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops):^[19]

1. Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane;
2. Jesus is betrayed by Judas and arrested;
3. Jesus is condemned by the Sanhedrin;
4. Jesus is denied by Peter;
5. Jesus is judged by Pilate;
6. Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns;
7. Jesus takes up his cross;
8. Jesus is helped by Simon of Cyrene to carry his cross;
9. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem;
10. Jesus is crucified;
11. Jesus promises his kingdom to the repentant thief;
12. Jesus entrusts Mary and John to each other;
13. Jesus dies on the cross; and
14. Jesus is laid in the tomb.

In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI approved this set of stations for meditation and public celebration.^[20][21]

The New Way of the Cross (Philippines)[edit]

Another set of Stations are being used by the Catholic Church in the Philippines. Filipinos use this set during Visita Iglesia, which is usually done every Holy Week.

1. The Last Supper
2. The Agony in Gethsemane
3. Jesus Before the Sanhedrin
4. Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns
5. Jesus Receives His Cross
6. Jesus Falls under the weight of the Cross
7. Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus carry the Cross
8. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem
9. Jesus is nailed to the Cross
10. The Repentant Thief
11. Mary and John at the Foot of the Cross
12. Jesus dies on the Cross
13. Jesus is laid in His Tomb
14. Jesus rises from the Dead

Modern usage

Station 5: Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the Cross, Good Friday procession 2011 at Ulm, Germany

In the Roman Catholic Church, the devotion may be conducted personally by the faithful, making their way from one station to another and saying the prayers, or by having an officiating celebrant move from cross to cross while the faithful make the responses. The stations themselves must consist of, at the very least, fourteen wooden crosses—pictures alone do not suffice—and they must be blessed by someone with the authority to erect stations.^[22]

Pope John Paul II led an annual public prayer of the Stations of the Cross at the Roman Colosseum on Good Friday. Originally, the pope himself carried the cross from station to station, but in his last years when age and infirmity limited his strength, John Paul presided over the celebration from a stage on the Palatine Hill, while others carried the cross. Just days prior to his death in 2005, Pope John Paul II observed the Stations of the Cross from his private chapel. Each year a different person is invited to write the meditation texts for the Stations. Past composers of the Papal Stations include several non-Catholics. The pope himself wrote the texts for the Great Jubilee in 2000 and used the traditional Stations.

The celebration of the Stations of the Cross is especially common on the Fridays of Lent, especially Good Friday. Community celebrations are usually accompanied by various songs and prayers. Particularly common as musical accompaniment is the Stabat Mater. At the end of each station the Adoramus Te is sometimes sung. The Alleluia is also sung, except during Lent.

Structurally, Mel Gibson's 2004 film, The Passion of the Christ, follows the Stations of the Cross.^[23] The fifteenth and last station, the Resurrection, is not prominently depicted (compared to the other fourteen) but it is implied since the last shot before credit titles is Jesus resurrected and about to leave the tomb.

Debates

Place of Christ's resurrection

Some modern liturgists^[24] say the traditional Stations of the Cross are incomplete without a final scene depicting the empty tomb and the resurrection of Jesus because Jesus' rising from the dead was an integral part of his salvific work on Earth. Advocates of the traditional form of the Stations ending with the body of Jesus being placed in the tomb say the Stations are intended as a meditation on the atoning death of Jesus, and not as a complete picture of his life, death, and resurrection. Another point of contention, at least between some ranking liturgists and traditionalists, is (the use of) the "New Way of the Cross" being recited exclusively in the Philippines and by Filipinos abroad.

The Stations of the Resurrection (also known by the Latin name of Via Lucis, Way of Light) are used in some churches at Eastertide to meditate on the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ.

Music

Franz Liszt wrote a Via Crucis for choir, soloists and piano or organ or harmonium in 1879. In 1931, French organist Marcel Dupré improvised and transcribed musical meditations based on fourteen poems by Paul Claudel, one for each station. Peter Maxwell Davies's Vesalii Icones (1969), for male dancer, solo cello and instrumental ensemble, brings together the Stations of the Cross and a series of drawings from the anatomical treatise De humani corporis fabrica (1543) by the Belgian physician Andreas van Wesel (Vesalius). In Davies's sequence, the final "station" represents the Resurrection, but of Antichrist, the composer's moral point being the need to distinguish what is false from what is real.^[25] David Bowie regarded his 1976 song "Station to Station" as "very much concerned with the stations of the cross".^[26] Paweł Łukaszewski wrote Via Crucis in 2000 and it was premiered by the Wrocław Opera on Good Friday March 30, 2018, and transmitted on TVP Kultura. Stefano Vagnini's 2002 modular oratorio, Via Crucis,^[27] is a composition for organ, computer, choir, string orchestra and brass quartet.

As the Stations of the Cross are prayed during the season of Lent in Catholic churches, each station is traditionally followed by a verse of the Stabat Mater, composed in the 13th century by Franciscan Jacopone da Todi. James Matthew Wilson's poetic sequence, The Stations of the Cross, is written in the same meter as da Todi's poem.^[28]

Literature

Dimitris Lyacos' third part of the Poena Damni trilogy, The First Death, is divided in fourteen sections in order to emphasise the "Via Dolorosa" of its marooned protagonist during his ascent on the mount of the island which constitutes the setting of the work.^{[citation needed][relevance questioned]}

Gallery

• 

  1st Station: Jesus is condemned to death

 
• 

  2nd Station: Jesus takes up his Cross

 
• 

  3rd Station: Jesus falls for the first time

 
• 

  4th Station: Jesus meets his Mother

 
• 

  5th Station: Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the Cross

 
• 

  6th Station: Veronica wipes the face of Jesus

 
• 

  7th Station: Jesus falls for the second time

 
• 

  8th Station: Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem

 
• 

  9th Station: Jesus falls for the third time

 
• 

  10th Station: Jesus is stripped of his garments (sometimes called the "Division of Robes")

 
• 

  11th Station: Jesus is nailed to the Cross

 
• 

  12th Station: Jesus dies on the cross

 
• 

  13th Station: Jesus is taken down from the Cross

 
• 

  14th Station: Jesus is laid in the tomb

See also

• Acts of Reparation to Jesus Christ
• Life of Jesus in the New Testament
• Seven Sorrows of Mary
• Sayings of Jesus on the cross
• Three Hours' Agony
• Via Lucis

References

1. ^ "The Way of the Cross". Browne and Nolan.
2. ^ Byrne, William (16 October 2020). 5 Things with Father Bill: Hope, Humor, and Help for the Soul. Loyola Press. ISBN 978-0-8294-5327-0.
3. ^ Ryder, Henry Ignatius Dudley (1920). Sermons and Notes of Sermons. Sands & Company. p. 58.
4. ^ "Stations of the Cross". St. Michael's Episcopal Church. 2012. Archived from the original on 17 February 2015. Retrieved 3 March 2015.
5. ^ Chryssides, George D.; Wilkins, Margaret Z. (11 September 2014). Christians in the Twenty-First Century. Taylor & Francis. p. 51. ISBN 978-1-317-54557-6.
6. ^ "Frommer's Events – Event Guide: Good Friday Procession in Rome (Palatine Hill, Italy)". Frommer's. Archived from the original on 7 January 2009. Retrieved 8 April 2008.
7. ^ Ousterhout, Robert G. (1981). "The Church of Santo Stefano: A "Jerusalem" in Bologna". Gesta. 2 (20): 311–321. doi:10.2307/766940. ISSN 0016-920X. JSTOR 766940. S2CID 191752841.
8. ^ Jump up to:^a b Weitzel Gibbons, Mary (1995). Giambologna: Narrator of the Catholic Reformation. University of California Press. pp. 72–73. ISBN 978-0-520-08213-7.
9. ^ Jump up to:^a b Thurston, Herbert (1914). The Stations of the Cross: an account of their history and devotional purpose. London: Burns & Oates. pp. 20–21, 46. OCLC 843213.
10. ^ Jump up to:^a b Schiller, Gertrud, Iconography of Christian Art, Vol. II, p. 82, 1972 (English trans from German), Lund Humphries, London, ISBN 0-85331-324-5
11. ^ The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907). s.v. "The Way of the Cross".
12. ^ "Text of the Stations of the Cross for 2020, led by Pope Francis". Aleteia / Foundation for Evangelization through the Media (FEM). 9 April 2020. Retrieved 19 May 2020.
13. ^ "First Station: Jesus is condemned to death". Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Retrieved 19 May 2020.
14. ^ Francesca Merlo (10 April 2020). "Way of the Cross: Meditations from a corrections facility". Vatican News. Retrieved 19 May 2020.
15. ^ "Fr. William Saunders". Archived from the original on 2009-04-30. Retrieved 2009-04-04. Because of the intrinsic relationship between the passion and death of our Lord with His resurrection, several of the devotional booklets now include a 15th station, which commemorates the Resurrection.
16. ^ "The Official Web Site for the Archdiocese of Detroit" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-12-23. Retrieved 2012-02-13. In some contemporary Stations of the Cross, a fifteenth station has been added to commemorate the Resurrection of the Lord.
17. ^ Joseph M Champlin, The Stations of the Cross With Pope John Paul II Liguori Publications, 1994, ISBN 0-89243-679-4
18. ^ Pope John Paul II, Meditation and Prayers for the Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum Archived 2013-06-03 at the Wayback Machine, Good Friday, 2000
19. ^ "Scriptural Stations of the Cross". www.usccb.org. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
20. ^ Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff (April 6, 2007). "Way of the Cross at the Colosseum". Vatican.va. Archived from the original on July 7, 2013. Retrieved February 18, 2018.
21. ^ "Pope Benedict leads Good Friday service". April 6, 2007 – via www.abc.net.au.
22. ^ "Catholic Encyclopedia: Way of the Cross". Newadvent.org. 1912-10-01. Retrieved 2014-07-03.
23. ^ Review Archived 2012-04-30 at the Wayback Machine, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2004
24. ^ McBrien, Richard P.; Harold W. Attridge (1995). The HarperCollins encyclopedia of Catholicism. p. 1222. ISBN 978-0-06-065338-5.
25. ^ Composer's note in the published score (Boosey and Hawkes, B & H 20286).
26. ^ Cavanagh, David (February 1997). "ChangesFiftyBowie". Q magazine: 52–59.
27. ^ Falcon Valley Music Ed., Stefano Vagnini, Via Crucis, Rome, 2002.^{[not specific enough to verify]}
28. ^ "The Stations of the Cross : Clarion Review". www.clarionreview.org. Retrieved 2017-12-16.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Stations of the Cross.

• Scriptural Stations of the Cross from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
• The Way Of The Cross: Presentation (historical development; present form, both traditional and scriptural), from the official Vatican website (accessed 19 May 2020)
• Via Crucis celebration texts used by the Vatican on Good Fridays since 1991 from the official Vatican website
• Video: Corine Schleif. Adam Kraft's Seven Falls of Christ. Walking the History of Emotions in Nuremberg. Part 1
• Video: Corine Schleif. Adam Kraft's Seven Falls of Christ. Walking the History of Emotions in Nuremberg. Part 2
• "Way of the Cross" article from The Catholic Encyclopedia