Unknown artist
Carmelite Saints, The Church Stella Maris, Haifa
I have no further description, at this time
St. John of the Cross
Drawing of the Crucifixion, circa 1550
Oil on canvas
I have no further description, at this time
John of the Cross (born Juan de Yepes y Álvarez; Spanish: Juan de la Cruz; 24 June 1542 — 14 December 1591), venerated as Saint John of the Cross, was a Spanish Catholic priest, mystic, and a Carmelite friar of converso origin. He is a major figure of the Counter-Reformation in Spain, and he is one of the thirty-six Doctors of the Church.
Unknown iconographer
Christian mysticism
Icon
I have no further description, at this time
John was born near Ávila, a town of around 2,000 people. In 1529 Gonzalo married Catalina, who was an orphan of a lower class; he was rejected by his family and forced to work with his wife as a weaver. He died in 1545, while John was still only around three years old. Two years later, John's older brother, Luis, died, as a result of malnourishment due to the poverty to which the family had been reduced. John's mother Catalina took John and his surviving brother Francisco, first to Arévalo, in 1548 and then in 1551 to Medina del Campo, where she was able to find work.
John entered a school for poor children to receive a basic education, mainly in Christian doctrine. Growing up, John worked at a hospital and studied the humanities at a Jesuit school. In 1563 he entered the Carmelite Order, adopting the name John of St. Matthias.
Br. Robert Lentz, OFM
San Juan de la Cruz/القديس يوحنا الصليب
I have no further description, at this time
Robert Lentz is a Franciscan friar. Besides painting many hours each day, he teaches apprentices, writes, and conducts workshops on art and spirituality.
Brother Robert was born in rural Colorado in 1946. His grandparents emigrated from tsarist Russia in the early 1900's. He studied Byzantine iconography by apprenticing himself to a master painter from the school of Photios Kontoglou in a Greek Orthodox monastery founded from Mount Athos.
His icons reflect his experiences among the poor in this country and in the Third World, as well as his Franciscan and Russian roots. They are filled with bright colors and often depict contemporary subjects. While always striving to remain true to the essence of Byzantine iconography, he adapts traditional conventions in order to minister better to the emerging Church. His icons remain transcendent expressions of the ancient Christian Tradition, and they invite us into communion with God and the saints. More on Br. Robert Lentz
Joan Cole
St. John of the CrossI have no further description, at this time
Joan Cole was born in Chicago, Ill. High school art major and Institute of Lettering & Design graduate. Also studied at American Academy of Art, Chicago, and the Ontario College of Art, Toronto, Canada. Through the years, employment consisted of Wall Décor Product Designing, Calligraphy, and Fine Art Painting for publishing companies.
After two pilgrimages to the Holy Land, her focus and passion turned toward Sacred Art Iconography. Joan's art and faith are very connected. More on Joan Cole
John was ordained as a priest in 1567. He subsequently thought about joining the strict Carthusian Order, which appealed to him. His journeyed from Salamanca to Medina del Campo.
François Gérard, (1770–1837)
Sainte Thérèse, c. 1827
Oil on canvas
Infirmerie Marie-Thérèse, Paris, France
François Pascal Simon, Baron Gérard (4 May 1770 – 11 January 1837), was a French painter born in Rome. At the age of twelve Gérard obtained admission into the Pension du Roi in Paris. From the Pension he passed to the studio of the sculptor Augustin Pajou which he left at the end of two years for that of the history painter Nicolas-Guy Brenet, whom he quit almost immediately to place himself under Jacques-Louis David.
In 1794 he obtained first prize in a competition. Further stimulated by the successes of his rival and friend Girodet in the Salons of 1793 and 1794. Gérard produced in 1795 his famous Bélisaire. In 1796 a portrait of his generous friend obtained undisputed success. In 1799, his portrait of Madame Mère established his position as one of the first portrait-painters of the day.
In 1808 as many as eight, and in 1810 no less than fourteen, portraits by him, were exhibited at the Salon, and these figures afford only an indication of the enormous numbers which he executed yearly; all the leading figures of the Empire and of the Bourbon Restoration, all the most celebrated men and women of Europe, sat for Gérard. Rich and famous, Gérard was stung by remorse for earlier ambitions abandoned. In 1817 he did homage to the returned Louis XVIII. After this date Gérard declined, watching with impotent grief the progress of the Romantic school.
Loaded with honors – baron of the Empire in 1809, member of the Institut on 7 March 1812, officer of the légion d'honneur, first painter to the king – he worked on, sad and discouraged; the revolution of 1830 added to his disquiet; and on 11 January 1837, after three days of fever, he died. More on Baron Gérard
In Medina he met the influential Carmelite nun, Teresa of Ávila. She was staying in Medina to found the second of her new convents. She immediately talked to him about her reformation projects for the Order.
Teresa asked John to delay his entry into the Carthusian order and to follow her. In August 1568 John travelled with Teresa from Medina to Valladolid, where Teresa intended to found another convent. After a spell at Teresa's side, in October 1568, John left Valladolid, accompanied by Friar Antonio de Jesús de Heredia, to found a new monastery for Carmelite friars. They were given the use of a derelict house at Duruelo, which had been donated to Teresa. On 28 November 1568, the monastery was established, and on that same day, John changed his name to "John of the Cross".
Unknown artist
St Teresa meets St John of the Cross and Fray Antonio de Jesús at Duruelo
Oil on canvas
I have no further description, at this time
In June 1570 Teresa's had been appointed prioress of the Convent of the Incarnation there in 1571. John became the spiritual director and confessor of Teresa and the other 130 nuns. In 1574, John accompanied Teresa for the foundation of a new religious community in Segovia.
Salvador Dalí
St. John of the Cross, c. 1951
Oil on canvas
Private collection
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marqués de Dalí de Púbol (11 May 1904 – 23 January 1989), known professionally as Salvador Dalí, was a prominent Spanish surrealist painter born in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain.
Dalí was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in August 1931. Dalí's expansive artistic repertoire included film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media.
Dalí attributed his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes" to an "Arab lineage", claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors.
Dalí was highly imaginative, and also enjoyed indulging in unusual and grandiose behavior. His eccentric manner and attention-grabbing public actions sometimes drew more attention than his artwork, to the dismay of those who held his work in high esteem, and to the irritation of his critics. More Salvador Dalí
At some time between 1574 and 1577, while praying, John had a vision of the crucified Christ, which led him to create his drawing of Christ "from above".
The years 1575–77 saw a great increase in tensions among Spanish Carmelite friars over the reforms of Teresa and John. Since 1566 the reforms had been overseen by Canonical Visitors from the Dominican Order.
In Andalusia to the south, the Visitor was Francisco Vargas, and tensions rose due to his clear preference for the Discalced friars. Vargas asked them to make foundations in various cities, in contradiction to the express orders from the Carmelite Prior General to curb expansion in Andalusia. As a result, a General Chapter of the Carmelite Order was convened at Piacenza in Italy in May 1576, out of concern that events in Spain were getting out of hand. It concluded by ordering the total suppression of the Discalced houses.
Portuguese School, 17th Century
The Venerable and Mystical Saint John of the Cross - 1st barefoot and Priest of the Counter-Reformation of Our Lady
Oil on canvas
88 x 68 cm
Private collection
The Portuguese Renaissance refers to the cultural and artistic movement in Portugal during the 15th and 16th centuries. Though the movement coincided with the Spanish and Italian Renaissances, the Portuguese Renaissance was largely separate from other European Renaissances and instead was incredibly important in opening Europe to the unknown and bringing a more worldly view to those European Renaissances, as at the time the Portuguese Empire spanned the globe.
As the pioneer of the Age of Discoveries, Portugal flourished in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, with voyages to India, the Orient, the Americas, and Africa. This immense trade network would create an incredibly wealthy Portuguese nobility and monarchy, that would become patrons for an incredible flourishing of culture, arts, and technology in Portugal and all over the world. More on The Portuguese Renaissance
Workshop of Titian, (1490–1576)
Philip II of Spain, between 1549 and 1550
Oil on canvas
Height: 103 cm (40.5 in); Width: 82 cm (32.2 in)
Museo del Prado, Madrid
Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio, or Titian (1488/1490 – 27 August 1576), was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school.
Recognized by his contemporaries as "The Sun Amidst Small Stars", Titian was one of the most versatile of Italian painters, equally adept with portraits, landscape backgrounds, and mythological and religious subjects. His painting methods, particularly in the application and use of color, would exercise a profound influence not only on painters of the Italian Renaissance, but on future generations of Western art.
During the course of his long life, Titian's artistic manner changed drastically but he retained a lifelong interest in color. Although his mature works may not contain the vivid, luminous tints of his early pieces, their loose brushwork and subtlety of tone are without precedent in the history of Western painting. More on Titian
King Philip II of Spain was supportive of Teresa's reforms, and so was not immediately willing to grant the necessary permission to enforce the ordinance. The Discalced friars also found support from the Bishop of Padua, who still had ultimate power to visit and reform religious orders. The nuncio's protection helped John avoid problems for a time. In January 1576, John was detained in Medina del Campo by traditional Carmelite friars, but through the nuncio's intervention, he was soon released.
On the night of 2 December 1577, a group of Carmelites opposed to reform broke into John's dwelling in Ávila and took him prisoner. John had received an order from superiors, opposed to reform, to leave Ávila and return to his original house. John had refused on the basis that his reform work had been approved by the papal nuncio to Spain, a higher authority than these superiors. John was taken from Ávila to the Carmelite monastery in Toledo, at that time the order's leading monastery in Castile.
El Greco (1541–1614)
View of Toledo, between circa 1596 and circa 1600
Oil on canvas
Height: 121.3 cm (47.7 in); Width: 108.6 cm (42.7 in)
Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Doménikos Theotokópoulos (1541 – 7 April 1614), most widely known as El Greco; Spanish for "The Greek", was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. The nickname "El Greco" refers both to his Greek origin and Spanish citizenship. The artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters.
El Greco was born in Crete, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the center of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before traveling at age 26 to Venice, as other Greek artists had done. In 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance. In 1577, he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. In Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best-known paintings.
El Greco's dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century. El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism, while his personality and works were a source of inspiration for poets and writers. El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school. He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with those of Western painting. More on El Greco+
Unknown artist
Our Lady comforting Saint John of the Cross in Prison
I have no further description, at this time
John was brought before a court of friars, accused of disobeying the ordinances of Piacenza. Despite his argument that he had not disobeyed the ordinances, and was jailed in a monastery where he was kept under a brutal regime that included public lashings before the community at least weekly, and severe isolation in a tiny stifling cell measuring barely 10 feet by 6 feet. Except when rarely permitted an oil lamp, he had to stand on a bench to read his breviary by the light through the hole into the adjoining room. During his imprisonment, he composed a great part of his most famous poem Spiritual Canticle, as well as a few shorter poems. The paper was passed to him by the friar who guarded his cell. He managed to escape eight months later, on 15 August 1578.
After being nursed back to health, John continued with the reforms. In October 1578 he joined a meeting of reform supporters, better known as the Discalced Carmelites. They decided to request from the Pope their formal separation from the rest of the Carmelite order.
At that meeting John was appointed superior of El Calvario, an isolated monastery of around thirty friars in the mountains.
In 1579 he moved to Baeza, a town of around 50,000 people, to serve as rector of a new college.
1580 Pope Gregory XIII signed a decree which authorised the separation of the old and the newly reformed, "Discalced" Carmelites. The Dominican friar Juan Velázquez de las Cuevas was appointed to oversee the decision.
Giuseppe Collignon (March 19, 1778 – February 10, 1863)
Transverberation of Saint Teresa of Avila with the Holy Family and Saint John of the Cross, 1825.
Church of San Niccolò al Carmine
The first painting on the left wall of the church describes the transverberation of Saint Teresa of Avila. "I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God”.(Teresa, Life, ch. XXIX, par. 12-13)". Aware of the immense suffering that the piercing would cause, Teresa looks towards the Holy Family in search of support, and her expression is one of pain but also of ecstasy. More on this work
Giuseppe Collignon (March 19, 1778 – February 10, 1863) was an Italian painter born in Siena. He worked in a neoclassical style, painting mainly historical subjects.
He was a contemporary of Pietro Benvenuti and Luigi Sabatelli. In 1800 he won a prize at the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence for an oil painting of Joseph sold by his brothers. He frescoed two rooms in the Pitti Palace (Room of Psyche and Room of Prometheus). The latter is painted with frescoes of the Chariot of the Sun obscured by Minerva and Prometheus. In 1811, he was named Academic Professor of Merit at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. One of his masterworks was Death of Sophonisba (1840, Milan). He moved to Siena to direct its Academy of Fine Arts, but in 1840 left the position due to illness. He died in Florence. More on Giuseppe Collignon
In November 1581, John was sent by Teresa to help Ana de Jesús to found a convent in Granada. Arriving in January 1582, she set up a convent, while John stayed in the monastery of Los Mártires, near the Alhambra, becoming its prior in March 1582. While there, he learned of Teresa's death in October of that year.
In February 1585, John travelled to Málaga where he established a convent for Discalced nuns. In May 1585, at the General Chapter of the Discalced Carmelites in Lisbon, John was elected Vicar Provincial of Andalusia, a post which required him to travel frequently, making annual visitations to the houses of friars and nuns in Andalusia. During this time he founded seven new monasteries in the region, and is estimated to have travelled around 25,000 km.
In June 1588, he was elected third Councillor to the Vicar General for the Discalced Carmelites. To fulfill this role, he had to return to Segovia in Castile, where he also took on the role of prior of the monastery. After disagreeing in 1590–1 with some of Doria's remodelling of the leadership of the Discalced Carmelite Order, John was removed from his post in Segovia, and sent by Doria in June 1591 to an isolated monastery in Andalusia called La Peñuela. There he fell ill, and travelled to the monastery at Úbeda for treatment. His condition worsened, however, and he died there, of erysipelas on 14 December 1591. More on St. John of the Cross
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