Painting Salvation: A fresh look at twelve classical paintings

Like sails, paintings consist of canvas stretched across perpendicular frames to reach some destination yet unseen. This book is like a sailing boat, then. Each of the twelve paintings commented upon could be seen as one of its sails. They display before our minds some limited aspect of God's revelation: his Incarnation, his childhood, the calling of his apostles, his sacrifice, his Resurrection, and the witness of his saints. Our commentaries offer a time of contemplation, an aesthetic emotion. They seek to reveal the beating heart of famous images. If any artist is expected to help us decipher the world, even more should the Christian artist describe faithfully the Design revealed to men by God. A feast for the mind even of the unbeliever, our approach will set in motion these ingenious paintings as powerful systems of signification. These pictures move―like sails catching the wind. Land ahoy, or heaven ahead, rather, if our crossing proves to be a safe and happy one. So many images are stored in our memory, which we wish were not. Some violent, some impure; some having occurred by accident, some culpably; some naturally, some as products of technique such as cinema, videos, computer games or advertising. A good way to heal our sight is to furnish our faculties with beautiful images designed as vehicles of truth. Our memory, our imagination, our emotions subsequently use such images as safe material to cleanse and refine our outlook on the world, on people and, fundamentally, on God and eternity.