After seventeen days of travel through France and Italy, I was exhausted and unsure whether I could enjoy Florence. After many early mornings and feeling disoriented by the hubbub of another new European city, I craved an opportunity to exhale and reorient my soul.
As it happens, a restful sleep and an Italian cappuccino do the tired pilgrim good. And yet the real respite that morning came when I entered the Convent of San Marco in the center of Florence. This place immersed me in the sacred scenes that sprang from the brush of Blessed Fra Angelico, a Dominican friar and painter who lived there in the fifteenth century. Before the deeply realistic Crucifixion he painted in the chapter house and the small frescoes of Christ’s life in each priory cell, I found a spiritual retreat, a place to breathe amid the bustle of culture and tourism.
My journey of visual contemplation, which began with praying before art in Florence, has continued through Derek Rotty’s book Praying With Sacred Art: Pondering the Mystery of Redemption through Visio Divina. This collection of thirty-four magnificent pieces of artwork accompanied by short and insightful reflections is an entire museum of sacred art in a small, beautifully published volume.
Art That Opens Windows
One of my earliest childhood encounters with sacred art came through the “windows into heaven” otherwise known as Byzantine icons. Through these depictions of the life of Christ, our Lady, or the Saints, we are transported from the human to the heavenly. Catholic sacred art overall has an additional purpose: to show us ourselves. Following this, Rotty’s goal with each image in Praying with Sacred Art is “to allow the piece of art to serve as a window into the viewer’s soul” (p. 6).
What do windows do? They permit us to look out and to see in. Sacred art as a window does both in a related fashion. By gazing outside towards scenes that reveal divine truths, we are better able to see into ourselves. Rotty helps us to look and understand these scenes. His reflections pull back the curtains on images already familiar to us, like Raphael’s Transfiguration and The Meeting of Mary and Elisabeth by Carl Heinrich Bloch. Other works of art create new windows, inviting us to envision familiar moments in unfamiliar ways, such as The Last Supper by Peter Paul Rubens, and Christ Calling the Apostles James and John by Edward Armitage.
In order to look out or to see in through a window, however, light is required. The process of visio divina allows such light to enter our souls through a visual journey into prayer. Although Rotty does not dive into the structure of visio divina, his work follows its tradition. Visio divina has four steps similar to lectio divina: visio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio. The reflections in Praying with Sacred Art constitute this process of gazing, meditating, praying, and contemplating: We are “prayerfully asking God to change [our souls] through the window of [our] sight” (p. 7). Yet steps of prayer must become action: A fifth and final step is operatio, seeking to live and be changed by what we have received.
Contemplation as Interior Examination
This way of contemplating art turns into a kind of gentle examination of conscience in Rotty’s book. As he highlights details from each image, he poses profound questions that relate the truths depicted in sacred art to our own lives. All is imbued with meaning: colors, clothing details, and the positions and expressions of characters. For example, considering the twelve-year-old Christ standing among the teachers clad in the hopeful color of green is a chance to ask ourselves whether we have allowed the hope of His teachings to take root in our lives. In contemplating Christ speaking with the Woman of Samaria, who leaves her jug at the well to tell her neighbors about Him, we are invited to ask ourselves whether we will leave behind our own attachments for greater joy in Jesus. Thus, the talent of painters like Murillo, Rubens, Caravaggio, and Bloch become helpful aids in our pilgrimage through this earthly life.
Multiple paragraphs in each reflection end with these deep questions, slowing our experience of reading down a bit. We are meant to linger over them, permitting our souls to breathe in Christ and exhale all that distances us from Him.
How to Read This Book
The best way to approach Praying with Sacred Art is with time: although the enriching beauty of this art draws you to read far, the richness of each encounter pulls you back to ponder more carefully. Short as it is, Praying with Sacred Art could be read over the course of an entire year, since the artwork covers the entire life of Christ according to the liturgical cycle. With Rotty’s guidance, we become pilgrims through:
- The Art of Advent
- The Art of Christmas and Jesus’ Childhood
- The Art of Lent and Holy Week
- The Art of Easter
- The Art of Jesus’ Public Ministry
- The Art of Jesus’ Parables & Miracles
In each of these sections, Derek Rotty has also paid close attention to the smaller journeys within the larger one: the thematic progression of each liturgical season. The paintings in the sections on Advent, Lent, and Easter follow the Gospel readings for the Sundays in these seasons. Praying with Sacred Art may also be approached with Rosary in hand, since many of the twenty mysteries are represented inside.
For each art and reflection pair, I recommend studying the image briefly on your own first, with an eye for details. Be prepared to return to the image as you read the accompanying insights. Rotty has chosen paintings rather than mixed media, but a few unique forms are found among the typical oil on canvas: an altarpiece, an Eastern icon, and a baptistry dome fresco.
A Title for the Cultured Coffee Table
Praying with Sacred Art will contribute beauty and culture to your bookshelf or coffee table. If you have been transformed by encounters with art before (as I was in Florence), this book offers a continuation. Or, if you desire to begin encountering beauty this way, Derek Rotty’s book is the place to start.
Just as windows connect us to the outside world, Rotty tells us that “meditating on these [sacred] images allows us to build up a mystical art museum in our minds and hearts by which we can remain connected to Him unto the fulfillment of our lives” (p. 222). Whenever I begin to feel a bit like I did in Florence and desire to breathe the air of visual contemplation again, I know my pilgrim heart will find its way back to this book.
Leila Joy Castillo calls Florida home but left her heart in hill country long ago. An alumna of Ave Maria University, she freelances in Catholic communications and is a published writer, primarily on Blessed is She and Ascension. When not dabbling in the multitudinous Google docs of her articles, Leila delights in music, personalist philosophy, quality time with her younger siblings, and her literary trifecta: Austen, Lewis, and Dante. You can find her on Instagram @leila_joyinthejourney or follow her personal site here.
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