Catholics can find ‘ray(s) of beauty’ at the Minneapolis Institute of Art

By Mark Johnson For The Catholic Spirit

The late Pope Benedict XVI famously said that, in today’s increasingly secular world, the only effective defense of Christianity comes down to two arguments, “namely the saints the Church has produced and the art which has grown in her womb.”

Important examples of the “art which has grown in her womb” can be found at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minneapolis, one of the nation’s premier art museums, a neoclassical landmark of the Twin Cities that has stood for more than a century.

Mia is home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history. Its Department of European Art “is an internationally acclaimed collection of thousands of artworks in all media, dating from antiquity to the present day, presented in over 50 permanent galleries, as well as in special exhibitions,” according to Rachel McGarry, the institute’s chair of European Art and curator of European Paintings and Works on Paper.

Many local Catholics have enjoyed Mia’s collection, which includes a treasure trove of Catholic-inspired gems — depictions of biblical stories, Christ’s life and agony on the cross, a vast array of the saints, the contemplative life, and the day-to-day experience of Christians. This predominance of Catholic themes is not surprising given that Christianity shaped European culture in profound ways. As the 20th century expressionist artist, Marc Chagall, wrote: “For centuries painters have dipped their paintbrush in that colored alphabet that is the Bible.”

Some of Mia’s Catholic art is on prominent display, but many of its gems are “hidden,” said Julia Doffing, 38, a parishioner of St. Paul in Ham Lake who is a Catholic artist and former art educator at Providence

Academy in Plymouth and Holy Family Academy in St. Louis Park. Doffing toured Mia with her students when she was teaching and now returns as often as she can. She believes Mia has a wonderful collection, “but you won’t be greeted by Catholic art as you walk through Mia’s front door, so you have to carefully seek it out.”

Bernard Carpenter, 68, who this year taught Christian Aesthetics at The St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul, agreed: “In a recent visit to Mia, I was moved to tears by a small wooden sculpture of the lifeless body of Christ after his crucifixion, but I’d missed it completely on my many prior visits.”

Christian art can have a profound impact on daily religious life. In a 2011 general audience, Pope Benedict XVI said that visiting art galleries and museums is not only an occasion for cultural enrichment but also presents possibilities for “a moment of grace, an encouragement to strengthen our relationship and our dialogue with the Lord, where we can stop and contemplate, in the transition from simple external reality to a deeper reality, the ray of beauty that strikes us, that almost wounds us in our inner selves and invites us to rise towards God.”

Father George Welzbacher, a retired priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis who has studied and appreciated Catholic works of art at Mia during his 72 years of priesthood, put it this way: “Christians, in their limited way, attempt to imitate and appreciate God’s beauty through art, which is why the great poet Dante described art as ‘the grandchild of God.’”

The Christian art at Mia illuminates the full range and depth of the Catholic faith. “Like the Catholic Church itself, Mia holds many artistic treasures and is open for all to explore,” noted Father James Perkl, pastor of MIA AND

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Mary, Mother of the Church in Burnsville and an iconographer who grew up visiting Mia.

One such “ray of beauty” is Anthony Van Dyck’s “The Betrayal of Christ,” painted between 1618 and 1620. The painting follows the familiar story of Christ’s betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Christ is the only vertical character in this swirl of action. All the other figures stand at angles and move against him like a storm-tossed sea breaking against a rock.

“Christ’s softly-lit face and resigned, confident look of compassion stand against the chaos around him,” observed Dominic Wolters, 23, a regular Mia visitor who is studying for the priesthood at The St. Paul Seminary and who hopes to use art in his ministry, as a means of conveying the splendor of God’s works and inspire awe at his love. “Van Dyck illuminates Christ as the source of our confident serenity in the midst of turmoil in the world and in our own lives,” Wolters said.

Every Catholic, noted Father Perkl, should view “The Betrayal of Christ” at Mia and ask this question: “Am I a follower of Jesus Christ or am I swept up in the chaos of the crowd and the world?”

“Saint Romuald,” painted in 1440 by Fra Angelico, himself a devout friar, illuminates a very different, contemplative component of the Christian story. This tiny painting is tucked away on one of Mia’s upper floors. St. Romuald was born in 950 and founded an order of monks who valued austerity and meditation. “The pensive, introspective look on St. Romuald’s face and the manner in which his eyes, full of sadness, are gazing downwards and to the side are very moving,” noted Carpenter. “It is as if he is turning away from the evil he sees.”

Father Joseph Johnson, pastor of Holy Family in St. Louis Park, who has led Catholic art tours at Mia, points out that this piece differs from “religious art,” such as the van Dyck, which tells a biblical story and is informational in nature. “Saint Romuald” is true “sacred art,” which — in an icon-like way — invites the viewer directly into a quiet pondering of Christian mysteries, Father Johnson said.

The “Church at Chailly,” painted in 1868-1869 by the French artist Jean-François Millet, brings into focus another important aspect of Christian experience — the parish church as the center of community life, where the faithful go to be baptized, married and buried.

“I love the simplicity and the connection between the bucolic scene of the life of the parishioners and the summit of their community: the parish,” said Wolters. “It places the Church into its context of the life of the believer and the creation that God made for us.” Doffing noted that, though central to the village, the church is still at a somewhat hazy distance from the viewer, “in order to emphasize that our faith is a journey to a distant goal.”

Christian art was everywhere in prior centuries — the eras of van Dyck, Fra Angelico and Millet — but people sometimes have the impression that modern art is hopelessly secular, observed Father Welzbacher. Mia’s “The Crucifixion,” painted by Georges Rouault in the early 1920s, is an example of this not being the case, the priest said.

Rouault began his artistic career as an apprentice to a stained-glass window painter of French Gothic cathedrals. That experience shows in the thick black lines and bold, luminous colors of “The Crucifixion,” and helps explain his self-perception as an artist: “I do not feel that I belong to this modern life … my real life is back in the age of cathedrals,” Rouault once commented.

The thick brushstrokes and splotches of color of “The Crucifixion” powerfully evoke the contortion and agony of Christ’s body on the cross. Carpenter said the painting is “a striking depiction of the central event of Christian history, featuring a very manly and human Christ.”

“The image speaks urgently to us — the suffering servant who longs for each of us to return to the Father,” added Wolters.

Special exhibits at Mia also bring Catholic themes to the Twin Cities. Rome’s Palazzo Barberini art museum recently loaned to Mia Michelangelo Caravaggio’s 1599 painting “Judith and Holofernes.” The painting is the centerpiece of a new exhibit, which also features 14 other works that depict a range of perspectives on the same biblical story. The exhibit runs through Aug. 20 and admission is free. The painting portrays the story of Judith, an Old Testament heroine, saving the Israelites from subjugation by vanquishing the Assyrian general Holofernes through her courage, beauty and guile.

Caravaggio’s signature elements are all here: a dark background, against which intensely illuminated figures look so real they seem to burst beyond the frame. At first glance, the painting seems too gruesome to ponder. But Father Johnson observed that, “although we can get queasy in the presence of painted moments like this, the stark battle of good and evil is central to the biblical story.” In Father Welzbacher’s words, “Good art can be a warning — an incentive — to avoid great evil, especially when we see vividly the consequences of evil.”

This Caravaggio is the most recent in a series of special exhibitions at Mia featuring Catholic themes. Last winter, for example, Mia mounted an exhibition of Botticelli’s art, including depictions of the Madonna and Child, accompanied by angels and saints, which have been appreciated as “exceptionally beautiful interpretations of a long-established subject in Roman Catholic art,” according to curator McGarry. (See: “Minneapolis Institute of Art exhibition features Italian Renaissance works from Uffizi Galleries” in the Oct. 28, 2022, edition of The Catholic Spirit, or go to tinyurl com/p22mxx5x).

McGarry envisions new Catholic gems on the horizon: “Currently, we are also working on strengthening our collection of historical Spanish art, and hopefully this will include some important Catholic works. Stay tuned.”

Artistic treasures such as those at the Mia serve important purposes in Catholic life and faith, Father Welzbacher said. They preserve memory of great biblical events (van Dyck’s “The Betrayal of Christ”); call us to contemplation and humility (Fra Angelico’s “Saint Romuald”); console us as we confront Christ’s supreme sacrifice and love (Rouault’s “The Crucifixion”); and warn us of sin’s consequences (Caravaggio’s “Judith and Holofernes”).

For Doffing, Catholic art also plays an essential role in personal renewal. “When my cares weigh heavy, I find that intellect alone sometimes falters and is insufficient,” Doffing said. “It’s then that I look to refresh my soul through beautiful Catholic art — the infinite understanding in an image of the Blessed Mother, Christ’s taking on of my pain in an image of his suffering on the cross.” In those moments, she added, “Catholic art reaches deep and finds those sometimes hidden places in me where God continues to whisper ‘you are an artistic work of beauty — you are made in my image.’”