Crucifixion overload, part two - Fra Angelico

We gave up on the Easter crowds in Florence, huge queues at the Academia (Michaelangelo's "David" etc etc) and the Duomo and the Uffizzi and moving amongst other quieter locales, made eventually for the frescoes by Fra Angelico in San Marco. After a while the LSO* became a little downcast, oppressed, by the agonies and the sadness of the crucifixion story we had already seen in a parade, and now in very many pictorial representations.

In the fresco above, what you see is three men being tortured to death, especially the man on the right.You might point out that counteless thousands of people died thus, and have died since in similar agonies. I'm leaving aside, of course, any question of belief, of the idea that there is a central importance to the Passion as the sacrifice that saves us all, because I don't share that belief. But great art involves us. Once you tune in to the conventions of such works, they are mighty powerful. Such works make one more likely, perhaps, to value the essence of such beliefs, if not all of their manifestions.

This one is calmer, perhaps more about sacrifice and love rather than just torture and agony. Still, look closely at his feet. Blood everywhere. Look at your own palm. Imagine having a big nail right through it.

"And his mother was there, she had to watch all this," murmured the LSO. It was, for once, an Easter experience that was about - well, Easter. You don't have to be a Christian to respond to the power of the story and the representations of it that we saw.

Then we found this famous Annunciation. If you've never seen it - it's quite large, and it's at the top of the stairs, so you walk up towards it. It's a knockout. In a peaceful Italian domestic setting there's suddenly this whacking great angel, just arrived, entirely present in an everyday sort of way, not with a backround of gold leaf, but with a background of a pretty little garden and a peaceful verandah.He is super real, with wonderful Technicolour wings and a gracious, courteous manner. 

He's breaking the news to Mary that although she has never "known" (as the Bible puts it) a man, she is in fact pregnant. And Mary? "She looks gone out," says the LSO. As well she might. Bit of a shock for a girl. Her arms are folded across her tummy. The two figures almost echo each other's posture. 

She looks almost sullen, astonished for sure. Maybe she's thinking "Me? Are you sure? Why me? What am I going to say to Joseph?" Nothing formulaic about it. Later maybe, she might get around to "blessed am I amongst women," but just now she is shocked to her core.

I think it's the combination of the spiritual (or supernatural, if you prefer) narrative context, and the humanity, the insight, of the presentation, that makes it so moving.

What a huge gift, what skill, to make something that makes no literal sense in terms of our daily world, so emotive and immediately real.


*The Long-Suffering One, because she puts up with me, funerals, nonsense etc.

Crucifixion overload: the power of the image, part 1

Easter in Italy brought me hard up against a lot of crucifixion, as you'd expect. In Buonconvento, near Siena, they do a Good Friday parade - not unique, I'm sure, but a first for me. 

Centurions on horses (one looking very wobbly, and grinning a bit at one point because his mates were gently ribbing him from the crowd) and centurions on foot with spears; scary black-robed and hooded people carrying a big cross; Jesus carrying his cross; children singing; white robed and hooded people; a sculpted jesus on  a bier; a big statue of Mary; women praying (throat miked leader, firm responses); Pilate at the start, of course; townspeople, mostly female; candles; some lovely a cappella singing; and mostly quiet or close to it from the watching crowd. 

All very solemn and despite the wobbly centurion, carefully and seriously done. They stop at places around town, thus creating local stations of the cross to link, symbolically and emotionally, their town and their Passion journey with Jerusalem and the original one. It was impressive and effective.

Behind me some teenagers were giggling and being a bit noisy. I couldn't help but think that if I were an independently-minded Tuscan teenager, what with the uproar over child abuse by the clergy and the attempts to cover it up, I might feel more like sniggering. Some locals, Catholics themselves, apparently don't like it either - they regard it as "witchery," we were told. 

But opposite me in the crowd a woman was weeping, and some people quietly crossing themselves. However one feels or whatever one thinks about the belief bases for Easter, the representation of it was powerful, because of the commitment of those involved. Drama doing its job.