This lovely statue of Our Lady is from Mission Santa Ines in Solvang, California. According to the Mission Website, it's a statue of "Our Lady of the Rosary, an excellent Mexican Baroque period sculpture from the mid-18th century."
Friday, December 5, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Old St. Peter's and the Sistine Chapel
We just went to an exhibit on objects from the Vatican. They mostly had works of art having to do with St. Peter and the popes, but also about St. Peter's Basilica - both the old one (built by Constantine) and the new one (built during the Renaissance). We also got to talk to a nice volunteer who told us a lot about Old St. Peter's and the Sistine Chapel and answered our questions we had about them.
They had a neat model of the Old St Peter's at the exhibit - we found a drawing of it on the Internet (shown above with link to the site). I was excited to see it, because I never knew what it looked like and we were just reading about it yesterday. Old St. Peter's was built in the 300s at the place where St. Peter died, which was a Roman circus (it's not a circus with clowns and jugglers, it's more like the Colosseum - they might have chariot races and gladiator fights and things like that). Around 1450, the pope decided to take it down because it was falling apart. From 1475-1483 they built a chapel and when it was completed, the pope hired Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Rosselli, and Perugino to paint the walls on the sides of the chapel. They painted the ceiling blue with stars. In 1508, another pope, hired Michelangelo to paint frescoes of the twelve apostles on the ceiling. After he started the work, Michelangelo decided that he didn't like them and came up with a different idea that we can see today. He finished the frescoes in 1512.
The groundbreaking for the new St. Peter's Basilica was in 1506 and it was consecrated in 1626.
Side commentary on another favorite from the exhibit, as explained by my then seven year old daughter:
We saw the Mandylion. The frame was made only out of gold, silver and jewels. It had angels on each side - their wings were gold and their bodies were silver. The picture was of God's face. It was really neat.
NOTE: I've transferred this several-years-old post from a different blog as it relates here - my children helped piece together this info.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Mission San Juan Bautista
Happy Feast Day to Blessed Junipero Serra, founder of the California Missions.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Friday, May 23, 2008
St. Thomas Aquinas
Stained glass window above the altar at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Palo Alto, California.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Cardinal Ratzinger on Cathedrals
Where the spirit is not alive, where it is not effective and does not reign, cathedrals become museums, memorials to the past whose beauty makes you sad because it is dead. That is the warning, as it were, which emanates from this cathedral celebration. Faith alone can keep cathedrals alive, and the question the one-thousand-year-old cathedral is asking us is whether we have the strength of faith to give it a present and a future. In the end, organizations for the protection of historical monuments do not preserve the cathedral, as imoprtant and commendable as they area - only the spirit which created it can do this.
Cardinal Ratzinger, A New Song for the Lord
Unit Study Information
I'm currently working on adding the details from the original Heart and Mind Magazine Unit Study to this website. Please check out the sidebar for a growing table-of-contents.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Saint Paul Outside-the-Walls
The Basilica of Saint Paul Outside-the-Walls is one of the four major basilicas of Rome. Friday was the feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul. The Pope said a special Mass from this Basilica to celebrate that feast.
See more photos here
Read about the unearthing of St. Paul's tomb here.
You can find out a little more about the basilica (and its famous paintings of the popes) here.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
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