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Monday 7 March 2016

Gill & Manzu at Westminster Cathedral


Eric Gill's Station IV, 1915, at Westminster Cathedral is part of Stations of the Cross 2016:

"Gill’s Stations of the Cross for Westminster Cathedral came at a pivotal time in his spiritual and artistic life. He began work on them just a year after converting from Anglicanism to Catholicism, and they represent one of his first major commissions. As he often did, Gill used himself and those around him as models, representing himself as both Christ and soldier, and using his wife’s hands for Mary. There is little tenderness in this encounter between mother and son. It is as if Jesus has already transcended the earthly plane. He raises his hand in dispassionate benediction, pronouncing in Latin, ‘blessed art thou among women.’ For Gill, who once declared ‘there can be no mysticism without asceticism,’ such reserve increased religious devotion. He also intended his Stations as a support to the downtrodden, as he emphasized in his book of meditations, Social Justice and the Stations of the Cross."


Westminster Cathedral also has a bronze wall panel by Giacomo Manzu, about whose work I have written recently - see here and herePatrick Rogers writes: "In response to the invitation by the Westminster Cathedral Art and Architecture Committee to Giacomo Manzu that he should produce a low relief bronze wall panel showing St Thérèse of Lisieux for the Cathedral, Manzu submitted a sketch in 1956. This was immediately approved and the commission awarded. Manzu then proceeded to design and produce the bronze in Italy with casting taking place in Milan. The cost was £680, which was defrayed by Miss Janet Howard as a memorial to her sister, Alice Lawrason Howard. Giacomo Manzu, regarded as among Italy’s greatest modern sculptors, died in 1991. We are indeed fortunate to have one of his most sensitive works in Westminster Cathedral."

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Emmylou Harris - Sweet Old World.

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