Now back from Ampleforth after a relatively traffic-free journey with two othe bloggers, Mulier Fortis and Bashing Secularism, I have selected and edited a few photos to share with you. First of all some shots from Ampleforth Abbey itself. Above you can see the Abbey Church with a sculpture of St Benedict in front. Below is the view over the southern edge of the North Yorkshire Moors.
Most of us were accommodated in the Grange, a comfortable guest house with a meeting room that was just the right size for the assembled company.
I was unsure of the subject of this sculpture until I saw it from this angle and realised that it is a modern interpretation of the Pieta. Not my cup of tea but I suppose it is easy to be negative. Can anyone explain it to me?Update: I was wrong - the sculpture depicts the Good Samaritan (himself an image of Christ) bearing the wounded man in his arms. See the very helpful comment on this post from Ben Whitworth, author of "The Sculpture of Leon Underwood."
10 comments:
What is St. Benedict doing with the square?
To me the sculpture looks like two people wrestling.
What is wrong with sculpture involving people showing the people looking like people?
Sharon
Hmm, it seems like the sculptor forgot to depict the not unimportant identity of the two persons in the Pieta. Still, one could argue it is intended to draw attention to the act of mourning and care that a Pieta shows, rather than who is doing the mourning and caring.
Just a guess.
Andrew - it is a prie-dieu on which he is half kneeling. Perhaps it is to convey prayer and work together?
Anon - yes, that's my gut feeling but I guess that there must be some rationale behind this style of sculpture. I'd be interested to find out a bit more so that I could at least understand it, even if I did not end up agreeing.
Father Tim,
perhaps I can shed some light on this. The sculpture is by the late John Bunting, who was for many years art master at Ampleforth. You will have seen quite a few of his pieces around the Abbey Church, e.g. his relief of St Benedict over the North Door, his holy water stoups in the shape of monks just inside the South Door, &c. If you poked around in the crypt after your morning Mass, you might have seen an altar cross and two candlesticks (the candlesticks in the form of the thieves) by Bunting's own teacher Leon Underwood (see my book 'The Sculpture of Leon Underwood' (Lund Humphries, 2000)).
Bunting was, I feel, happier working in stone and wood than in bronze - his greatest influences were from the Baroque sculptors of Spain - and I would make no claim that the sculpture in your picture is his best work. Bunting's people generally look more like people than those of most of his contemporaries (who were playing around with scrap iron and barbed wire), but I suppose there is a degree of abstraction from the human form in his work which is not to every one's taste.
Anyway, to cut to the chase, the sculpture in question is a representation of the Good Samaritan, bearing in his arms the wounded man. For Bunting, this parable was a strong image of Christ's tender care for mankind wounded by sin.
Does this help?
Dear Ben, thank you very much indeed for taking the trouble to post that helpful comment. Bunting's theme reflects the patristic exegesis of the parable which always saw Christ as the Good Samaritan rather than taking the parable simply as a moral exhortation.
Thanks to your encouragment I will pay much closer attention to the sculpture at Ampleforth on my next visit.
The sculpture certainly makes more sense as a depiction of the Good Samaritan than as a Pieta, but perhaps the confusion was prompted by the fact that the hanging arm is immediately evocative of Christ's hanging arm in that most famous of Pietas by Michelangelo. I rather like the sculpture: the massiveness of the figures is powerful, as is the way that the two people form a single mass of suffering and caring. And they *do* look like people. A measure of stylisation is probably necessary to depicting something as difficult as one person lifting the deadweight of anotherm unconscious person: attempted naturalism would probably result only in melodrama, while this sculpture captures the reality of the effort.
I remember seeing a series of medieval depictions of the deposition which demonstrated that this subject was difficult to portray. Michelangelo's masterpiece was shown to succeed because the figure of Christ was smaller in relation to Mary than it would have been in real life.
Thank you for your thoughts, John.
Looks like a good setting for the conference.
The views looks fantastic and it seems very peaceful.
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