(Above) Raphael: The Ecstasy of St. Cecilia. From Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale (at the Exhibition Raphael: Sublime Poetry)

Raphael: Sublime Poetry

Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New  York

March 29–June 28, 2026

The Metropolitan Museum has just opened a new exhibition on Raphael. Now Raphael Sanzio has been, even in his own lifetime and up to the present day, one of the most famous artists who ever lived. This exhibition collects many paintings and drawings of the artist. It’s a unique opportunity to study the artist’s  development as well as the development of his individual works of art based on this unique juxtaposition of works from all over the world.

Now Raphael’s time (he died in 1520 at just 37 years of age) was of course a unique culmination of Renaissance and Western art. It was the age of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Giorgione, Bellini, and Titian, among many others. Raphael at an early age showed a complete mastery of the technical handicraft of art. But early on he also showed a unique organizational talent and an ability to receive and understand contributions of others which he incorporated creatively into his style. 

Raphael’s career reached its apogee in the Rome of Popes Julius II and Leo X, where he found appropriate challenges for his artistic genius. As time went on the commissions grew ever larger and he was able to meet the situation by assembling and managing a well-trained workshop. A true universal genius of the Renaissance, Raphael later had a role in the planning of the new basilica of Saint Peter. Moreover,  he was able to work with  artists in other media, creating influential works that for centuries diffused his style all over Europe (the prints of Raimondi; the great tapestries for which Raphael prepared the cartoons).  All this can be seen in this exhibition. 

But Raphael was not merely an exemplar of a static, “canonized” art. In his interactions with the art of Leonardo or Michelangelo he was already laying the foundations for further developments. Especially his later frescoes introduce movement, drama and conflict. It was these principles that would dominate the next period of art –  mannerism – after Raphael’s death.

In this exhibition we see abundant evidence of the various aspects of his genius. Take the many  images of the Madonna, each one carefully differentiated from the others. The portraits are of unique quality. Then, there are the great religious paintings. The religious works  demonstrate the significance of Raphael’s and Renaissance Italy’s Catholicism for the art of the High Renaissance – this is no “art for art’s sake.” The Madonnas, as the exhibition points out, derive ultimately from a Byzantine icon of the 12th and 13th centuries. It was an image that was particularly relevant when the mortality of both mothers and children in childbirth was exceedingly high. The tapestries, depicting events from the Gospels or the acts of the apostles, are of epic grandeur. 

But of particular relevance to the spiritual vision of Raphael  is the painting of Saint Cecilia in ecstasy.  The saint turns her eyes to heaven, viewing a chorus of angels singing, while she holds, facing downward,  a small organ. At her feet, strewn  on the ground, are various worldly musical instruments, “broken and unstrung”. She is surrounded by four other saints involved in a mysterious dialogue with each other or with the viewer. The style is not didactic but displays great insight into the personages depicted.

The Metropolitan Museum was able to restrain its woke commentary more than it usually has done recently. Yes,  in this exhibition there are passages in the Museum’s texts about the dire position of women in Renaissance –  ignoring the role that extremely well-educated women played in the unfolding of the Renaissance as the exhibition itself points out. I also did not appreciate the use of the Alba Madonna as a logo on posters, scarves, refrigerator magnets and mugs. 

(Above) The “Alba Madonna.” Currently in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. – previously in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg.(From the exhibition Raphael: Sublime Poetry)

Now such an exhibition, involving consideration and comparison of many drawings and paintings,  summons the visitor to contemplation. That is difficult to achieve in the crowded exhibition halls of the Metropolitan Museum. With a few exceptions the crowd was definitely older or to put it more frankly,  old. Some visitors  were in wheelchairs or using walkers. Is this because the art of Raphael –  that once  had been almost a cliché –  now is known only to those who attended  high school or college art courses in the distant past? I don’t know! 

And what is a Catholic to think about the light this exhibition may shed upon the current situation in the Catholic Church?  Because Raphael, in contrast to the artists of modernity was not an individual creator but was embedded in a society that shared his ideals and offered him the patronage to realize  them. These was especially true of Raphael’s two principal patrons, Julius II and Leo X. If we move forward to our own day there’s quite a different situation. Even though it may be an invidious comparison to set the current regime of  the Vatican against that which produced perhaps the highest development of Western art, we have to admit that the current artistic patronage of the Roman Catholic Church is a sick joke. We have the cartoon-like images of Marco Rupnik. We have the obsequious courting of contemporary artists by clerics like Cardinal Ravasi and Bishop Fisichella. By introducing the “Luce” mascot of the 2025 jubilee year, the Catholic Church abased itself before what their semi-senile leadership  thinks is popular “youth” culture. Then we have,  with the direct involvement of the late Pope Francis, agitprop-like art: statues of migrants,  art created in women’s prison etc.

Raphael, with his precocious ability, seemingly unlimited facility,   organizational skill,  authentically classical harmony -as well as his  evident religious faith – may  seem alien to our day’s notion of the artist. The Metropolitan Museum itself offers  a strangely contrasting exhibition, now in its final days, of Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946). We see, in her works, the final stages of the Western figurative tradition: isolated individuals, dreamy symbolist landscapes, self-portraits revealing a person seemingly in dissolution or even on the brink of madness. 

We ourselves cannot recreate the art or the specific circumstances of the High Renaissance. Much of 19th century Catholic ecclesiastical art was a commendable but not totally successful attempt to do so (e.g., the “Nazarenes”). But what we can do is study the masterpieces of an artist like Raphael, and attempt to  understand the great skill,  discipline and intellectual effort that were necessary to create them. And perhaps from this study, God willing,  a new Christian art may arise in some way and at some time not yet known to us.  For it is by engaging with the masters of the past that a rebirth  ( that is, a “renaissance “) of culture will come. 

New Jersey: You are invited to a documentary screening of Foreclosing on Faith with director/producer Viktoria Somogyi and attorney Brody Hale.

3pm Sunday Feb 22

Knights of Columbus Hall

130 Main Street

Woodbridge, NJ 07095

Registration is free but required.

Register at Eventbrite.

Released in 2017, Foreclosing on Faith documents dramatic struggles that were then taking place in Cleveland, Boston, and New York which pitted faithful Catholics against bishops over church closures.

The Newark Archdiocese is presently undertaking a program of downsizing known as “We Are His Witnesses.” It will likely result in a considerable decrease in the number of Catholic parishes and churches in Bergen, Essex, Hudson, and Union counties. The aim of this presentation is to discuss the root causes of parish and church closures and to educate Catholics about the options and rights they have if they find their parish on the list when the Archdiocese of Newark releases it in the late spring or early summer of this year.

Speakers:

Co-producer and -director of Foreclosing on Faith, Viktoria Somogyi is a Hungarian journalist and economist based in Rome, Italy.

A native of Massachusetts, Brody Hale has a private law practice with a focus on nonprofit organizations, social entrepreneurship, and conservation. An expert in Canon Law, Brody has for over a decade provided assistance to groups of Catholics fighting to prevent their churches from being closed by dioceses.

Admission is free but registration is required. 

Please spread the word!

On February 1 a remarkable concert took place at St. Mary’s church in Norwalk CT. Performers from the Juilliard school presented 17th century music: first of Italy, then of Bohemia (at the time part of the Holy Roman Empire). Charles Weaver, the music director at St. Mary’s and a teacher at the Juilliard, led the concert and performed on the theorbo and guitar. The other performers were mainly his students:

Marisa Karchin and Elizabeth Weaver, sopranos

Lydia Becker and Ryan Cheng, baroque violins

Nathan Francisco, baroque cello

Amanda Beranek, triple harp

Highlight of the evening was a performance of the Loutna Česká (the Czech Lute) composed in 1653 by Adam Michna. It is an early song cycle of religious poetry – MIchna both wrote the text and composed the music. Only recently have all parts of the score been rediscovered. This is the second performance of the work in its restored form in the United States. It was performed in the Czech language.

Loutna Česká is an extraodinary work of baroque poetry, audacious in its bold images. The text was matched by the complexity of the music. Now Adam Michna was Catholic, and worked with the Jesuits in restoring Catholicism in Bohemia, Let us remember that in 1648, five years before the Loutna Česká appeared, the horrific Thirty Years’ War had ended. It had begun and ended in Bohemia, devastating much of the country. Prague was the capital of lands of the Bohemian crown (which included more than just Bohemia) and functioned as a kind of subordinate capital of the Habsburg domains, most of which were in turn a part of the Holy Roman Empire. Thanks to the efforts of Michna and others, the glorious age of the Bohemian Baroque -in art, architecture and music – began in those years of recovery from the trials of war. We can see its world-famous legacy even today in Prague and elsewhere in Czechia.

SAVE MOST HOLY REDEEMER invites you to a documentary screening with a talk by the director/producer, other speakers, and a panel discussion.

This event will take place at Maryhouse, 55 East 3rd Street, New York, NY on Saturday Feb. 21 from 6 to 8 pm.

Released in 2017, Foreclosing on Faith documents dramatic struggles that were then taking place in Cleveland, Boston, and New York which pitted faithful Catholics against bishops over church closures.

The event will include a screening of Foreclosing on Faith and a talk by the film’s co-producer and co-director, Viktoria Somogyi. Another speaker will be Brody Hale, a lawyer who has for more than a decade made it his personal mission to help Catholics fighting to keep their churches from being shuttered, sold, and demolished or put to profane use.

There will be a panel discussion and a question-answer opportunity.

Follow this link for more information about this event and to reserve a spot.

SAVE MOST HOLY REDEEMER is a group of parishioners and friends of Most Holy Redeemer Church on 3rd Street between Avenues A and B in the East Village of Manhattan. In August of 2025, we were told that our beautiful, 174-year old church was being closed. With the guidance of our lawyer, Brody Hale, we have petitioned Rome for redress. We are a small but dedicated group of people who are volunteering our time to save our church. For more information about Most Holy Redeemer Church and to sign our open letter to the cardinal, click here.

Featuring joyful lovesongs to Jesus and Mary from Loutna Česká (The Czech Lute), a masterpiece from 1653 by Adam Václav Michna, along with 17th-century Italian works by Legrenzi, Agostini and others.

Marisa Karchin and Elizabeth Weaver, sopranos

Lydia Becker and Ryan Cheng, baroque violins

Nathan Francisco, baroque cello

Amanda Beranek, triple harp

Charles Weaver, theorbo

(Above) 8th century psalter from England with a partial English translation between the lines.

Sing a New Song: The Psalms in Medieval Art and Life 

An Exhibition at the Morgan Library

Through January 4, 2026

We are in the last weeks of a special exhibition at the Morgan library on the psalms and their role in medieval life. Now the exhibition includes much more than that. On display are several Hebrew texts of the psalms, including one of the earliest known manuscripts of a psalm from Egypt. There are examples of translations from the Byzantine world, Romania, Egypt and Ethiopia. There are other medieval chant books, prayer books, books of hours and breviaries which fill out the exhibition.

The exhibits on display include some of the most important creations of the illuminator’s art. Let us remember that up to about the year 1200 the creation of illuminated manuscripts was not a sideline, but a main focus of Western art. And for many centuries thereafter artists continued to create new masterpieces – even after the invention of printing. 

(Above) A Gradual from Florence 1392-99: shown is Ascension day (“Viri Galilaei…”)

The accompanying texts to the exhibits, although clearly coming from a non-Christian perspective, are informative and fair. I would only add the following points regarding what a visitor can learn from these magnificent works of art. 

This exhibition reminds us of the importance of the written word prior to modernity. As I wrote in regard to another exhibition of illuminated manuscripts at the Morgan Library in 2022:

Do not these masterworks demonstrate to us the importance the written word once had? Today a word appears on Outlook and – if it even survives the spell checker – shortly thereafter may vanish forever. Yet in illuminated manuscripts the word is carefully preserved for all time. This is particularly true of the early medieval period. But even towards the end of the centuries covered by this exhibition, we see the extreme care with which books, both printed and handwritten, are prepared. 1) 

In contrast with today, the book in earlier ages was a precious thing. This was doubly so when it contained the word of God. 

(Above) St. Ann teaching the Virgin Mary (and apparently a school as well).

These exhibits demonstrate also the liturgical nature of medieval prayer life. Singing and reading the entire psalter each week was absolutely central to the prayer life of monks, clergy and nuns. Let us remember too that, in the Middle Ages, the psalms would have been first heard as sung, not read from a book.  The illustrations in these books show again and again the rituals of the Church. 

 After about 1200 the production of books increasingly came into the hands of guilds of artists and, after 1450,  of printers. The written psalms, both in Latin and later in the vernacular, became much more widely accessible to laymen. Yet even into the16th century Latin remained the primary language. And the psalms with their preeminent role throughout the liturgy (the mass and the divine office)also formed the piety of laymen. And women too – some of these books of psalms and prayers were destined for female clients; women were also involved in the shops making them. We think of the books of hours, which were produced in innumerable examples in the 15th and 16th centuries. Indeed, at least some laymen were reading breviaries,  a type of book which had arisen in the 13th century. Reading by the laity of the “liturgy of the hours” was later claimed as an innovation of the liturgical movement and Vatican II. 

We discover that the medieval laity were not an ignorant mass, excluded by the Latin language from the rituals of the Church and the words of scripture, and forced to develop their own piety. There was no gap, as asserted by the Liturgical Movement,  between an “objective” liturgy and a “subjective” private piety. Of course, readers of Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars would already be familiar with these facts. 2) 

(Above) St. Thomas More’s prayer book with his handwritten notes.

A monument to this medieval lay piety is the last exhibit: the Latin prayer book of St. Thomas More, annotated by him with prayers and notes, both in Latin and English. He did this in in prison awaiting execution. This book is an inspiring yet poignant relic of his personal devotion – a concluding witness to the strength of the faith in old Catholic England.

For more information on the Exhibition see the website of the Morgan Library: Singing a New Song.

1. The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny, Imperial Splendor: The Art of the Book in the Holy Roman Empire 800-1500. ( 1/18 2022)
2. Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580.( Yale University Press, New Haven and London 1992)

A splendid vespers with music primarily fron the Spanish and Mexican traditions. The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny was honored to co-sponsor the evening.

Rev. Daniel Ray, rector of the basilica, was the homilist.

The magnificent 1868 Erben organ is still undergoing restoration. Jared Lamenzo, Director of Music of the Basilica, was the evening’s Director of Music. The musical forces of the basilica were reinforced by the visiting choir of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge(David Skinner, Director of Music).

The evening concluded with Benediction.