Cornelius Sullivan on the Annunciation Sculpture by Marton Varo, Ave Maria, FL

The Annunciation, with Sculptor Marton Varo, Ave Maria, Florida

Cornelius Sullivan

Naples, FL 

The church is in the center of the town of Ave Maria in Florida. It dominates the main piazza like a European Cathedral, a Duomo, and it faces Ave Maria University. The church, the town, and the university are all dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. 

The facade of the church, the Oratory, highlights a monumental high relief marble sculpture of the Annunciation by internationally renowned sculptor Marton Varo. The archangel Gabriel kneels respectfully before the striding Virgin emerging from the white marble. The art is both traditional and innovative and it signifies that the building is a Roman Catholic Church.

  

The sculpture saves the odd Post Modern building that kids call a space ship and that has been compared to an airplane hanger. Its silhouette, front and back, resembles a Bishop's mitre. Being Post Modern means that its identity, its function, can be known by how it looks. Strictly Modern architects did not care if you knew if their building was an apartment building, or a bank, or a church, it was all about their edifying geometry. The architectural vocabulary of the Oratory, employing both masonry and steel, is not of a particular style but the building is recognizable now as a church because of the Annunciation sculpture. 

The monumental marble sculpture may be the most important religious art on a church in this country. It is remarkable because the sculpture takes up such a large percentage of the facade.  It was designed for the space of the pediment as classical relief sculptures were and it is now part of the architecture. In our age of replication, mass production, and cheap mass media, it is important to understand how this art was created.  How it was made can help to explain its uniqueness and its significance. Every inch of the marble was formed by the hands of the sculptor.  

Before going into detail about the unique significance of the sculpture allow me to address some criticisms of the art which will help to define what it is not. It is not a sterile stick figure representation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is not a bloodless academic study of the two figures. 

I have heard of an objection to the fact that the Virgin looks like a woman. We know from the Gospel that she was a woman. Is it not reasonable to assume that she had hips that would allow her to carry and bear the Christ child? It is insulting to common sense and to the Mother of God to insist that she be represented as a neutered stick figure. A personal Puritanism has no place in Catholic theology or art. Remember the bad art from previous decades, felt banners saying "peace" and faceless cut out figures holding hands? This is so much more than that. The sculptor has an understanding of feminine beauty. "Blessed is the womb that bore thee, the breast which thou has sucked" -Luke 11:27. 

Another critique came from a sculptor who does ecorche. That is the practice of making a sculpture of a figure by first making the skeleton and then laying the muscles over it to learn internal structure. This is a restrictive academic approach to sculpture and plodding academic sculptors never have enough art in their art. They prize correctness over beauty. A quote from Fr. John Saward comments on correctness and beauty.  

" Robbed of the beauty of sacred art, the Christian can become blind to the beauty of Divine Revelation. And that is disastrous, for, when sundered from beauty, truth becomes correctness without splendour and goodness a value of no delight. -The Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty, Art, Sanctity & The Truth of Catholicism, Ignatius, 1997.  

Picking up on Saward's concept of beauty, it is clear to see that Marton Varo is a sculptor who understands beauty. He does not make political art, he does not make decorator art to match design schemes. 

Lest anyone think art like this is extravagant I remind them of a sentence by Pope Benedict that reifies the truth that art is not superficial but essential to the Church.  

"The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely, the saints the Church has produced and the art which has grown in her womb."-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, The Ratzinger Report, Messori, 1988. 

I have suggested that the Annunciation is significant because it is a unique grand monumental architectural religious work of art and further that it is about beauty. The beauty of the message and the beauty of the sculptural form are combined and work together. 

Marton Varo is a "Direct Carver". That is significant. Contemporary Direct Carvers are as connected personally with their work as were Greek and Renaissance carvers who also worked directly on the stone by hand.  

Direct carvers began in the Twentieth century to reject the industrialization of sculptural practice. They insisted on carving themselves and they preferred that stone look like stone. Nineteenth Century American neo-classical marble figures that grace museums were carved by artisan copyists in Rome around 1900. Sculptors like Hiram Powers and Thomas Crawford made the clay sculpture that was cast in plaster and then sent to a workshop. The sculptors would sign the completed copy. This was also the practice of Auguste Rodin who was a modeler in clay.  

The normal procedure for a work the size of the Annunciation would be for a committee to approve a small model that would be sent to Cararra or Pietrasanta, Italy to be enlarged in marble. With some luck in a few years one could expect at least a decent copy. There would be no guarantee that what looked good at three feet high would work at thirty feet high on the building.  

I did mention that Varo knows how to sculpt figures. He has completed very large scale figures in high relief and has understood the necessary engineering to also fasten them to a building. 

I have imagined that as Archangel Gabriel left on his mission he may have asked, "Should I kneel?" God might have said, "Artists might show you kneeling, or on your toes, or in the air. Don't worry you will know what to do." He is kneeling and the Blessed Virgin looks both humble and daring enough to say yes to God's plan. Varo's Virgin is a substantial figure who is strong and active. That is an innovative interpretation because many historical representations show her as passive or surprised, perhaps reading or praying. We must remember that upon hearing this news she was immediately decisive and active in journeying to help her cousin Elizabeth. We may read the expression of the Virgin not as startled, or puzzled, or contemplative, before her decision, but as inspired after the fact of her "fiat", after her yes. 

On any given day you can see small groups of people in the remote location on the edge of the Florida Everglades taking pictures of the Annunciation of The Blessed Virgin Mary. Those photographs will subsequently go around the world.   

 

Marton Varo worked for long hours each day in public before the whole community. Covered with white marble dust, (and "looking like a baker" as Leonardo da Vinci said of Michelangelo) he would stop and answer questions for students and pilgrims. When asked at a discussion forum, when the work was nearing completion, if the Virgin Mary had communicated anything special to him, he responded, "Yes, she said keep working."  

Ave Maria (Schubert), Andrea Bocelli

Ave Maria Celebrates its Feast Day

When the town of Ave Maria was being planned, the layout of the Ave Maria town center was oriented so that the azimuth of sunrise -- the point at which the sun breaks the horizon -- would be directly behind the Ave Maria Oratory on March 25, when the Solemnity of the Annunciation is normally observed. 

Yesterday we celebrated that feast with a beautiful Annunciation Mass and Eucharistic procession at which our bishop Frank Dewane presided.

Afterward students danced joyfully to the Irish music of a visiting band from DC.  The open air concert concluded with a quiet moment as the sound system died, the audience moved in close, and the two fiddlers played Schubert's Ave Maria.  The audience sang along quietly.  Not only did the students know the Latin words, but they knew what Schubert had done with them and could sing them to his music.  An impressive and beautiful moment.  Enough to make an old man cry!

Church Militant in Peril

Here is the letter of Bishop DeWane read at all masses today in the Diocese of Venice:

Bishop Frank Dewane’s Letter Regarding the HHS Healthcare Mandate

The following letter is scheduled to be read at Mass in the Diocese of Venice during the weekend of February 4-5, 2012 

January 31, 2012

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

An alarming and serious matter that negatively impacts the Church in the United States directly has arisen, and strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith. The federal government, which claims to be “of, by, and for the people,” has just dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people—the Catholic population—and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees’ health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include those “services” in the health policies they write. Further, almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies.

In so ruling, the Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. And as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled either to violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The Administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply.

We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made second class citizens. Do not be misled by attempts to turn this into a debate about Church teaching or the morality of contraception. The issue here is religious liberty and freedom of conscience.

Already our brothers and sisters of all faiths and many others of good will have joined in this important effort to regain our religious freedom. Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture, only to have their posterity stripped of their God given rights. In generations past, the Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect Her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust She can count on this generation of Catholics to do the same. Future generations deserve nothing less.

Therefore, I would ask of you two things. First, as a community of faith we must commit ourselves to prayer and fasting that wisdom and justice may prevail, and religious liberty may be restored. Without God, we can do nothing; with God, nothing is impossible. Second, I would also recommend visitingwww.usccb.org/conscience, to learn more about this severe assault on religious liberty, and how to contact Congress in support of legislation that would reverse the Administration’s decision.

I take this opportunity to extend to all of you my continued consideration and prayers. United in prayer and in confidence in God's goodness, I remain

Sincerely yours in Christ,

+ Frank J. Dewane
Bishop of the Diocese of Venice in Florida

###

PA:

This is an alarming and serious matter for the whole Church.  It is an unprecedented (in the United States) attack on religious liberty and so on the basic freedoms of all Americans, regardless of their views on the specific matters of abortion, sterilization, and contraception.  We do not know yet how all the Catholic and other religious organizations affected will react--those the Administration is coercing under this HHS rule to purchase products and services that they consider gravely immoral.  The most compromised may find some clever way to justify to themselves their compliance with this unjust law.  The best will refuse to comply and refuse to pay the onerous fines the rule calls for (said to amount to $10 million for Notre Dame in the first year alone and escalating thereafter).

Some communities, dioceses, and organizations are so weakened by the developments discussed in my previous post that they will be hard to mobilize.  In other cases, like my own hometown of Ave Maria, FL, as seriously Catholic community as can be found outside a seminary or monastery, the resistance will be solid.  Here, in marked contrast to the situation Philip Lawler describes for Boston, everyone (something like 95% on any given Sunday) goes to Mass on Sunday and close to two thirds of the students attend Mass daily.  There are four Masses celebrated on Sunday and three daily.  The president of Ave Maria University has already said that AMU will not comply with this rule.  Since this whole new town is built around the university and the church at its heart, an unrelenting implementation of the rule could well close down the whole community and result in financial ruin for many of us.  Some militant secularists would not be sorry to see us go, no doubt, but many who are not Catholic or even sympathetic to the Church or her teachings will be troubled.  They will correctly see the Administration's decision as a move to abnegate the First Amendment, drastically undermine civil society, and impose a uniform state religion, a secularist orthodoxy, on the whole population.  As in the first centuries of Christianity, many Catholics will buckle and pay obeisance to the state's gods, but many will stand firm regardless of the sacrifice involved.

As I watch the procession of priests, deacon, and servers at the beginning of Mass and follow the recession at the end, I lock my eyes on the large crucifix that leads the little group.  It is an image the early Church was afraid and perhaps embarrassed to display, being the symbol of state terror, warning everyone of the price to be exacted from those who defied the state and its demands for sacrifice to the state's gods.  It is also, as Fr. Barron points out, a kind of taunt, in which we proclaim the triumph of the Cross, the persistence of the Church against which--we have the divine promise--the gates of hell will not prevail.  The very place where Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome is the physical center of the Church.  Peter's successor is to be found there today, two thousand years later, while the emperors, kings, tyrants who persecuted the Church have crumbled, along with their mighty regimes, to dust.

As Peter's latest successor has said, the Church suffers when she becomes used to too much comfort and has too close an accommodation with secular powers.  She grows in strength and numbers, not through establishment (look at the sorry state of the Church in western Europe today, especially where the Church was most 'powerful' or hegemonic in worldly terms) but through and in the face of persecution.

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.

Our New Home

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Marton Varo completes Annunciation sculpture at Ave Maria, FL

Bach/Gounod - Ave Maria (Cecilia Bartoli)

Ave Maria - Bach/Gounod (violin & harp)

Departures - Cello Solo for Ave Maria Gounod And Movie Theme

A most beautiful song - Ave Maria (Schubert) - Andrea Bocelli