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medpundit |
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Friday, January 02, 2004Take a look at the full painting of Flight on the Rest to Egypt, with Joseph collapsed at the foot of the Sphynx while his wife and stepson sleep serenely in its embrace. It says more about Saint Joseph than it says about the other two members of his little family. Joseph bore a lot of burdens through no fault of his own. But bore them he did and without complaint. A wife pregnant with someone else's child, a long trip at the height of his wife's pregnancy. (And who do you suppose delivered that baby in the stable?) Then, a much harder trip to a foreign land, all for the sake of that very baby who had already caused him so much grief and who was very pointedly not his. That image of him collapsed on the desert floor speaks volumes. There he is, in all his human weakness, but nonetheless able to love with the purest love. The kind of love that his wife's baby grew up to preach.. The kind that "suffers long, and is kind; envies not; vaunts not itself, is not puffed up,does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not her own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil." that "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." All so beautifully expressed in the exhausted Joseph. Merson was fiercely committed to his old school style. So much so, that he resigned his position at the Beaux Arts school to protest the rise of the modernist tradition. In the end, modernism won. The names of the impressionists live on while Merson remains a slight figure, not even mentioned in the sweeping coffee table histories of art. Not withstanding the fact that some of his work received much wider circulation. posted by Sydney on 1/02/2004 07:41:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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