* This painting refers to the biblical story, from the book of Numbers, in which Balaam, a prophet, foretells the coming of a powerful leader, or messiah, from the people of Israel. * The painting by Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin (1858) illustrates this prophetic moment, symbolizing hope and the rise of a new era...
The intricate decorative elements, likely executed by a skilled 12th-century artist, reflect the characteristic fusion of Christian symbolism and indigenous Egyptian motifs unique to Coptic art, such as interlacing geometric patterns and stylized floral designs framing the text. The manuscript’s preservation and vivid ornamentation not only testify to the...
Coptic tradition recounts that the Holy Family’s journey through Egypt spanned approximately three to four years. Throughout this period, they are said to have visited many sites, mainly traveling along and across the Nile River. Accounts describe the Holy Family repeatedly crossing the Nile, journeying through the Delta, and...
This is a list of my favorite 12 orders of Catholic nuns and sisters in no particular order. This list includes their history, and images of their habits. What is a Catholic Nun or Sister? In the Roman Catholic tradition, there are many religious institutes of nuns and sisters (the...
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Details: The Holy Family consists of the Child Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and Saint Joseph. The subject became popular in art from the 1490s on, but veneration of the Holy Family was formally begun in the 17th century by Saint François de Laval, the first bishop of New France, who...
Details: The liberation of the apostle Peter is an event described in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 12 in which the apostle Peter is rescued from prison by an angel. Although described in a short textual passage, the tale has given rise to theological discussions and has been the...
Details: Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence is an early sculpture by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini. It depicts the saint at the moment of his martyrdom, being burnt alive on a gridiron. According to Bernini's biographer, Filippo Baldinucci, the sculpture was completed when Bernini was 15 years old,...
Details: In Masses celebrated in accordance with the 1962 Roman Missal the Gloria is sung frequently: the 1960 Code of Rubrics require it at not only on I and II-class feasts (corresponding to solemnities and feasts in the post-Vatican II Mass) but also on III-class feasts (corresponding to memorials in...
Details: This set of posters created by Joseph Binder depict various Bible portraits with verses. This image shows Saint Mark and features the quote: "Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is. And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch....
Details: One of the masterpieces of Romanesque art, this altar cross with some ninety-two figures and ninety-eight inscriptions is the vehicle for a complex iconographic program that is unrivaled in Christian art. On one side, the stylized trunk of a tree is superimposed on the Cross, and the terminals present...
Details: The priest makes the sign of the Cross while he begins to read the Introit, which is usually taken from a Psalm. This evolved from the practice of singing a full Psalm, interspersed with the antiphon, during the entrance of the clergy, before the Prayers at the Foot of...
Details: This intense portrait depicts Fernando Niño de Guevara (1541–1609), who in 1596 was named cardinal and is dressed as such here. In 1599 he became Inquisitor General of Spain but resigned in 1602 to serve the rest of his life as Archbishop of Seville. The painting probably dates...
Details: This panel which is part of a larger ensemble was commissioned for the private chapel in the castle of Ebreichsdorf, south of Vienna. Originally, there were eighteen scenes, some extending across two lights of the windows. Except for one panel in Vienna, The Cloisters panels are all that survive....
Details: In the Catholic Church, a bishop is an ordained minister who holds the fullness of the sacrament of holy orders and is responsible for teaching doctrine, governing Catholics in his jurisdiction, sanctifying the world and representing the Church. Catholics trace the origins of the office of bishop to the...
Details: Saint Anthony Abbot's test of faith at the hands of a clutch of demons is represented here in a charming, if somewhat naive, Late Gothic style. Dressed as an abbot, the saint holds a crosier, which terminates in a tau cross and a mendicant's bell;...
Details: Two nuns in their habits stand in front of a brick wall. Across the street behind them is the Paramount Theatre and a Cabaret advertising a movie starring Virginia Dare. The photographer titled this image, "Ideals Persist-Backdrops Change." 🙏🏽This image is in the public domain. Free Download...
Details: Asperges (Sprinkling with holy water, Psalm 51:9, 3) is an optional penitential rite that ordinarily precedes only the principal Mass on Sunday. In the sacristy, a priest wearing an alb, if he is to celebrate the Mass, or surplice, if he is not the celebrant of the Mass,...
Details: Tarchiani transforms a troubling subject—the thirteenth-century founder of the Dominican order flagellating himself—into a serene, meditative composition. With the attention of a still-life painter, he isolates a series of captivating motifs, including the linearity of the altarpiece viewed in profile contrasted with the soft folds of Dominic’...
Details: A monstrance, also known as an ostensorium, is a vessel used in Roman Catholic churches for the display on an altar of the consecrated Eucharistic host during Eucharistic adoration or Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. Wikipedia 🙏🏽This image is in the public domain. Free Download 40028060114_9bfa1cdb1a_o.jpg...
Details: Joseph was a 1st-century Jewish man of Nazareth who was married to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and was the legal father of Jesus. Joseph is venerated as Saint Joseph in the Catholic Church, Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Church and Anglicanism. His feast day is observed by some Lutherans....
Details: Belshazzar's Feast is a major painting by Rembrandt now in the National Gallery, London. The painting is Rembrandt's attempt to establish himself as a painter of large, baroque history paintings. The date of the painting is unknown, but most sources give a date between 1635...
Details: Public processions with the Blessed Sacrament became popular only when Jesus’ real presence in the Eucharist was questioned. For many centuries this sacramental reality was taken for granted, but in the 16th century, overt denial of the Real Presence in the Eucharistic species came with the Protestant Reformers. In...
Details: The devotion to the Sacred Heart (also known as the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Sacratissimum Cor Iesu in Latin) is one of the most widely practiced and well-known Catholic devotions, wherein the heart of Jesus is viewed as a symbol of "God's boundless and passionate...
Details: The Master of Noah’s Ark was named after an illuminated initial containing that subject now in the Vatican Library. Though he may have worked in Florence, he was unlikely to have been Florentine himself. This rare miniature depicts the story from the apocrypha of Tobias, son of Tobit,...
Details: In 1486, Isabel of Castile, patroness of the explorer Christopher Columbus, commissioned an elaborate alabaster tomb for her parents, Juan II of Castile and Isabel of Portugal. This star-shaped tomb, still standing in the center of the church of the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores, outside Burgos, was made between...
Details: To foster deep devotion to Saint Joseph among Catholics, and in response to the “May Day” celebrations for workers sponsored by Communists, Pope Pius XII instituted the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker in 1955. This feast extends the long relationship between Joseph and the cause of workers in...
Details: Ugolino da Siena was the most original and accomplished follower of Duccio di Buoninsegna, the greatest Sienese painter of the fourteenth century. Among Ugolino's most important commissions was the multi-panel altarpiece for the high altar of Santa Croce, the Franciscan church in Florence. This painting of the...
Details: Juan Martínez Montañés was one of the greatest spanish sculptors of the first half of the seventeenth century. Based in Seville, he carved numerous wooden statues and reliefs that were painted and integrated into large altar screens called retablos (English: retables) for churches in his native region or to...
