Was fortunate enough to meet her and talk a little about some of these artworks, she held my hand the entire time. Some of her insights are truly startling.
Thank you to whoever posted this RU-vid on WONDERFUL SR WENDY in Rome ! I love EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT ART LOVING SISTER ! Now Sr Wendy is with Our Lord and the Angels and Saints ! Blessings from Michigan USA
Amazing. Thanks for posting this. She is so insightful and utterly amazing when she speaks. Intelligence, class, and passion. An utterly remarkable human being.
Sister Wendy Beckett has a discerning eye and an enlightening philosophy about art. She brings it to life with perspective I’ve wouldn’t have imagined and she does it all so eloquently. Thank you for this gift. And to the person who favortied this video that brought me here, you have my gratitude. :)
I could anyone not love Sister Wendy. I was accidentally introduced to her back in 2006 when I was, dare to say it, channel-surfing, and came across this slightly spunky nun on a special about various, famous painters that appeared on a local PBS/public access channel. I've been in love with her since.
This is art appreciation at its best. Sr Wendy is an example par exellence of articulate interpretation of history's greatest artisans and their works. How I wish now that I'd reviewed this series before visiting Rome earlier this year.
To me, 'Sister Wendy' is an adorable little Penguin in her virginal full traditional habit, talking to us about some of the most erotic works of art, history has to offer in a most quaint and informative manner that has made her a Cult Classic worldwide. Her presentations are humorously insightful that keeps ones attention.
"He was regarded as the bad boy of art. I don’t myself go along with this. I admit he did dreadful things like killing someone over a game of tennis but none of us can judge.”
The amazing thing about the Pieta is just how disproportionate it is. Mary is massive. She is the focus of the piece. The supposed offspring of a creator deity is shown as considerably smaller, weak, frail, lost in her fabric and lap. It is a not a very flattering statement regarding the religious myth of a grandiose Jesus. It is about Michelangelo's view on the importance of a proper maternal presence above anything else - even invisible sky monsters.
To me its about mary been the mother of humanity. Mary is raised up not because we wish it. Mary is raised up by catholics because Jesus give her to us as our mother. If you sent your own mother to me and i turned her away is that not insulting you as well as your mother. Its not a matter of making her more important its all a matter of love.
The only part she is wrong about is the signature. He signed it tempestuously, when he had overheard two people talking about, what they had wrongly believed, some OTHER artist doing the work. He, in wrath, chiseled in Latin, "Michael Angelo...did this!" At that moment he said he had ruined the sculpture.
Michelangelo, the great artist lived and was trained by a stone cutter from childhood. His own mother was very sickly and he had to live with the stone cutter and his wife many times and over many years. He idealised his Ma. He made her bigger and likely more like the surrogate mother, because his own Ma died young, so he made her up. This idea of Mary holding this grown man, for me, has more to do with Michelangelo’s ‘lack’ of mothering, or ‘mothering by another’ unconnected woman. Since childhood he longed for his real earthly mother, and he could feel, and displayed the disconnection, and he showed it to us in this beautiful sculpture. Mary is not to be prayed to in this regard, but many who saw this sculpture would be taught to pray to Mary. Many would try to claim Mary is on a pedestal, like here, and she is larger than Jesus to show the inclination for people to pray to her. But it was Michelangelo’s way to explain his broken disconnected heart. It is after all, his life experience! I feel it is more about how unconnected Michelangelo felt toward his own mother, and even toward the woman who cared for him, and how he saw the mother (surrogate) as younger, because it was his experience that his Mom was likely older. Jesus was different than Michelangelo. Although longing to be with Mary in life, he instead became more connected to the first component of the trinity, his Father. Just like the stonecutter gave Michaengelo a trade so did God give Jesus a way to show us God’s love for us and be the son of God, who God gave us to die for us, and rise again, and thereby ‘to keep’ his earthly family. Michelangelo’s role of an amazing artist, but only human releases us from the capture of Mary as a deity. In other words we pray to God in the name of Jesus. Jesus gave Mary over to his friend John to look after her earthly needs. He did not abandon her on earth. She is His earthly mother and not ours. Should she be prayed to? No. She is not God, she has a special place, but is not God. We all have our beloved Jesus to care for us, and so did John, and Mary.
