Wonder

One of the best experiences you can have with art is the feeling of wonder--maybe transcendence is a better term. It's come for me in various ways. When I was a young boy, reading Robinson Crusoe took me out of my Oklahoma bedroom and onto a beach in the south seas. In adolescence, the wonder of a museum room full of sculpture and paintings by Frederic Remington did something similar by taking me into the 19th century West. Years later, in the Prado Museum in Madrid, I rounded a corner and came face to face with "The Descent from the Cross" by Rogier van der Weyden, a work dating to the mid-15th century that had been the subject of a college lecture, and feeling of wonder washed over me once more. 

Rogier van der Weyden, "Descent from the Cross," oil on panel 1435

 

At the time I was serving in the military and found myself in Madrid with time to spend, so I had gone into the Prado Museum, knowing little about it or about European art, but curious. Not twenty steps from the entrance I turned a corner into a fairly large gallery and there it was. A jpeg doesn't do this painting justice since it is enormous--about seven feet by eight feet overall--and the figures are nearly lifesize. It was originally a piece for a chapel but eventually found its way into the Spanish royal collection. Even in its own day this was a famous painting. 

What I had learned years earlier and half a world away suddenly flooded back. The scene is the removal of Jesus of Nazareth's body from the cross. The lifeless body sags. At that moment his mother has fainted, her posture an echo of Jesus, as is the knee of the man reaching to support her and the bowed head of Mary Magdalene on the far right. You can always identify Mary by her blue robes in Christian iconography. The space of the painting is shallow and the corners of the work make it look almost like a box. Many comment on the detailed passages--folds, tears, and so on. The size, the brightness of the palette, and those stored bits made my scalp prickle with recognition, appreciation, and yes...wonder. It was unforgettable. In the decades since it's been my great good luck to experience wonder before great art many other times. 

I wish that for all of you.