This site's editor-in-chief is a Catholic husband, father, and author. He loves sharing the Catholic faith through art and graphic design. Check out his prayer books and coloring books on Amazon.com
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, a Catholic church dedicated to the patroness of our nation, is a place of worship, pilgrimage, evangelization, and reconciliation. Sacred art adorns each sacred space of...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Saint Barbara known in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the Great Martyr Barbara, was an early Christian Lebanese and Greek saint and martyr. Accounts place her in the 3rd century in Heliopolis Phoenicia, present-day Baalbek,...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This is the only known icon devoted to the genealogy of a monastic order. Its subject is the "House of Ewost' atéwos," one of two major monastic orders of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church....
The son of God is represented seated on heaven's throne, with his right hand raised, palm faced outward with three fingers extended. This gesture communicated a particular message to medieval Catholics in Western Europe. It is part of an iconographic pose called in Latin the "Maiestas Domini,...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Our Lady of Sorrows (Latin: Beata Maria Virgo Perdolens), Our Lady of Dolours, the Sorrowful Mother or Mother of Sorrows (Latin: Mater Dolorosa), and Our Lady of Piety, Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows or Our...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This monumental panel probably once decorated a chapel. Both are from a large window in which the Crucifixion was in the center and the Saint Christopher at the right. The third panel, which would have been...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! In the Roman Missal we find the instruction, “In the Dioceses of the United States, the practice of covering crosses and images throughout the church from [the fifth] Sunday [of Lent] may be observed. Crosses remain...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Apostle John was one of the "pillars" of the Jerusalem church after Jesus' death. He was one of the original twelve apostles and is thought to be the only one to have...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! “Commesso can best preserve antiquity and memory...and can resist all the battles of water and wind and other mishaps of fortune and of time.” Thus Giorgio Vasari wrote of commesso, a newly revived antique technique...
A monstrance is used to display the consecrated host during the Blessed Sacrament in a Roman Catholic church or in a procession for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. This example, or a nearly identical one, was part of an award winning altar service shown by the firm of Poussielgue-Rusand...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! According to the Legend of St. Catherine, this young woman converted to Christianity after receiving a vision. At the age of 18, she debated 50 pagan philosophers. Amazed at her wisdom and debating skills, they became...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This scene takes place entirely in the celestial sphere, with a background of defined and golden clouds. Saint Joseph appears in profile, kneeling, and of advanced age, holding a hand to his chest and a flowery...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! An altar server is a lay assistant to a member of the clergy during a Catholic liturgy. An altar server attends to supporting tasks at the altar such as fetching and carrying, ringing the altar bell,...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Jerome (c. 342–347 – 30 September 420) was born at Stridon, a village near Emona on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia. Jerome is best known for his translation of most of the Bible into Latin...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! In this painting Gentile da Fabriano combined several different devotional and biblical subjects: the Madonna of Humility, the Nativity, and the Annunciation to the Shepherds. As the Madonna of Humility, the Virgin sits upon the ground,...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! An altar server is a lay assistant to a member of the clergy during a Catholic liturgy. An altar server attends to supporting tasks at the altar such as fetching and carrying, ringing the altar bell,...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! To test Abraham's faith, God ordered him to sacrifice his only child Isaac. Abraham bound Isaac, laid him on the altar, and drew his knife to kill him. At that moment, an angel appeared...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! A muscular young man with a strong profile, who looks fully destined to kill a giant and to reign as Israel's king, this David is no innocent boy with a slingshot. Carelessly cradling Goliath&...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Gian Lorenzo Bernini was just twenty-three years old when he received one of his first commissions to make a full-sized bust of Pope Paul V, the recently deceased uncle of his most important patron,...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! At the Passover of most likely 30 or 33, Pontius Pilate condemned Jesus of Nazareth to death by crucifixion in Jerusalem. The main sources on the crucifixion are the four canonical Christian Gospels. Pilate's...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Old Testament hero Samson rests his head on his hand in a pensive, even melancholic pose. Objects on the table recall two of his heroic deeds: he killed a lion with his bare hands, and...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! In the late 1400s Andrea del Verrochio set up a large workshop where he and his assistants reproduced copies of his sculpture and other works for a middle-class market. Originality was not the objective; in...
Details The main sources which directly attest the fact of Christ's Resurrection are the Four Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul. Easter morning is so rich in incident, and so crowded with interested persons, that its complete history presents a rather complicated tableau. According to St. Matthew,...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! In his right hand, the Christ child grasps a stem of roses. The beauty and fragrance of roses symbolize heaven, while their thorny stems allude to the crown of thorns and Christ's suffering. The...
