It’s Holy Week for the world’s 2.4 billion Christians. As such, it’s a great time for us to meditate on how sacred music and sacred art accompany us on the road to Calvary to the foot of Christ’s Cross and beyond.
The life, Passion, death and Resurrection of Jesus have provided rich and provoking subject matter for composers and artists for many hundreds of years, so for this joint Catholic News/Art of Dying Well podcast we’re joined by priest and art afficionado Father Patrick van der Vorst.
Where do we start with the ebullient Fr Patrick? Three years a priest, but in a former life he was a head auctioneer, entrepreneur, Belgian TV personality, and an investment-securing Dragons’ Den contestant!
He is also the founder of the bewilderingly good Christian.art.
On this episode, we cover four main areas. Sacred music and how it serves as a soundtrack to life, death and everything in between, the auction room and mortality – an extraordinary segment that includes the extraordinary valuation of a painting that was found in a convent dining room – beauty, faith and art and how it links to a life beyond this one, and finally what us Catholics call that solemn and holy period – the Sacred Triduum, the incredible drama of Christ’s journey to the Cross, his Passion, death, and Resurrection.
Suggested links to the art and music mentioned on this podcast.
Music
Stabat Mater
Sir James Macmillan
St Matthew Passion
Johann Sebastian Bach
Artwork
La Pietà
Michelangelo
St Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City
Massacre of the Innocents
Peter Paul Rubens
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
Scenes from the Passion of Christ
Hans Memling
Galleria Sabauda, Turin
The Descent from the Cross
Rogier van der Weyden
Museo del Prado, Madrid
The Stations of the Cross
Pray with us – Fourteen ‘Tableaux Vivants’
