Free stock photos of Catholic subjects.
Details: A monstrance, also known as an ostensorium (or an ostensory), is a vessel used in Roman Catholic churches to display some object of piety, such as the consecrated Eucharistic host during Eucharistic adoration or Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, on an altar. It is also used as a reliquary...
Details: St. Benedict’s Parish started as a mission Chapel of the Church of St. Gregory the Great, Virginia Beach, Virginia. The Chapel was established by virtue of Pope John Paul II’s motu proprio, Ecclesia Dei, under the aegis of the Most Rev. Walter F. Sullivan, DD, then Bishop...
Details: Byzantine art includes work created from the fourth century to the fifteenth century and encompassing parts of the Italian peninsula, the eastern edge of the Slavic world, the Middle East, and North Africa. The Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity and in 330 moved his capital from Rome to Constantinople (modern-day...
Details: These plaques were probably originally placed at the end of the arms of a processional cross. They are decorated in an enameling technique called basse-taille in which colorful translucent enamel pastes are fused over an engraved and chased silver plaque. Source 🙏🏽This image is in the public domain. Free...
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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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...
Details: The Church of the Irish Martyrs was opened on 18 April 1909. Among the early Catholic settlers in the area were Irish gold-miners and it was their influence that led to the new church being dedicated to the Irish Martyrs. The church is located in the Sligo Street directly...
Details: Christ appears in the center of the principal face of the reliquary beneath the roof plaque, which depicts the hand of God flanked by two angels swinging censers. Distinguished by his cruciform nimbus, he holds a book in his left hand and raises his right hand in blessing; the...
Details: This rare devotional shrine manifests Christian belief in the miracle of the Incarnation, by which God took on human body and nature, uniting both human and divine in the person of Jesus. Closed, it is a statuette of the enthroned Virgin Mary nursing the infant Jesus. When opened, the...
Details: Nestled in a dramatic landscape of gorges and waterfalls, the monastery of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, from which this cloister comes, was founded in 804 by Saint William (Guilhem), legendary duke of Aquitaine and a member of the court of Charlemagne. Saint-Guilhem thrived as a pilgrim's destination on the road...
Details: The chapter house was the daily meeting place in most European monasteries and convents. The monks or nuns sat on the stone bench around the walls, as business was discussed each day and a chapter of the Rule of Saint Benedict, the official code of monastic behavior, was read....
Details: This precious silver box was created to contain a relic of the martyred English saint Thomas Becket. Saint Thomas was the archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 to 1170, and he is perhaps best known for his struggles with King Henry II of England over the separation between the rights...
Details: Inscriptions on the back of this object indicate that it served as the repository for a relic believed to be a fragment of the True Cross and that it is thought to have been made for a convent of the Poor Clares, probably in Florence. It is an extraordinary...
Details: Meant to be seen from both front and back, this large Crucifix represents Jesus hanging on the Cross, but nonetheless triumphant over death: his eyes are wide open, and he wears the gold crown of the King of Heaven. Though the original church from which this image comes is...
Details: An exceptional ivory object, this diminutive booklet is unusual in that both the exterior covers, depicting scenes of the Passion, and the interior covers, containing representations of the Virgin, are carved. The religious nature of the booklet suggests that it served as an accessory for private devotion. The painted...
Details: One of the most famous ivory carvings to survive from the tenth century, this plaque depicts Christ enthroned against an open worked checkerboard background. He is blessing a model of a church presented to him by Emperor Otto the Great (r. 962–973) and a host of saints including...
Details: Saint John the Evangelist Catholic Church Complex is a historic church of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus at 351 North Market Street in Logan, Ohio. The current structure was built in 1897 in a Colonial Revival/Late Gothic Revival style. 🙏🏽This image is in the public domain. Free...
Details: The Chapel of the Holy Cross is a Roman Catholic chapel built into the buttes of Sedona, Arizona, run by the Diocese of Phoenix, as a part of St. John Vianney Parish in Sedona. The chapel was inspired and commissioned by local rancher and sculptor Marguerite Brunswig Staude, who...
