One more before bedtime.This is the angel's eye. The angel in the stairwell with the lily and scroll that may or may not be Gabriel but I'm thinking is just an angel. Just another pretty face. Up close, it loses its medium, just like a pure musical note loses the instrument it is played on and sounds like every other B flat or whatever. When I uploaded this, Mike said to me, "whose eye is that?" and he was incredulous when I flipped over to the stained glass window of the angel.
I noticed today that the Mary images in our windows are not all the same woman's face (as opposed to the characters in our Stations of the Cross, which are frighteningly the same throughout the 14 pieces). The early Mary at the Annunciation is not the same tired woman in the Flight into Egypt. And the Mary saying goodbye to Jesus is different, too. I don't know if this is purposeful--wisdom, age and grace--or if it's a change in artist's hand. There are a couple that seem to match--Nativity, Flight into Egypt, the Presentation. Her face is less realistic in those windows, less mature artistically. But the one of her and Jesus, it's like she could step out of the window and talk with us.
Looking at the window in this sort of detail, though, I'm struck by how much is left up to chance and whim and the materials. Note the tiny flaw in the glass on the right side. And it is tiny--I am millimeters away from the glass when I took this. I wonder, though, how many faces of angels and Marys and Simeons and so on didn't make the cut.
1 comment:
Well, I've spent WAY too much time dealing with the mystery of the angel in the stairwell.
Why can't it be Gabriel? Since original records are gone (and now I think it was all planned this way to make us absolutely crazy trying to figure everything out ...look how much you're learning, though) all we can do is guess. But with the lily and the scroll, it must be Gabriel. Angels are often associated with music. In our Motherhouse chapel in SA, our clerestory windows are all angels, playing various instruments. So maybe Gabriel is there as guardian of all the musicians who may pass that way. Are you using a particular book for the symbolism? I think part of the holiness of the windows is the mystery that is hidden in their meanings. It's the thinking and reflecting and trying to understand - a parallel of what the faith journey is all about. And they (the windows, that is) are doing what they are meant to do - drawing us deeper into the mystery. Part of me doesn't want to know, but a big part of me does! Who decided that window should go there, and who should be in it? Imagine all the meetings that took place deciding! Do you think 50 years from now, there will be a little group gathered, wondering, "who decided...?"
MCH
Post a Comment