I occasionally find myself enraptured by the fine arts, in particular static visual art.  I suppose the brush strokes and the minutia are like the dates in the study of history, they are necessary fundamentals, but they are not the point.  Ovid said the purpose of art was to conceal itself, the important thing is the meaning. Like the themes of literature visual themes can convey rich meaning to our soul.  Like the subterfuge of fantasy, painting can smuggle truth into our minds(which Lewis said of fairy stories).

I fear that modernism has killed our appreciation of many things, including art.  This is true of one of my favorite artists.  He went unappreciated for decades, even in the 1980’s his pieces could be had for a few thousand dollars, because he held onto the old ways while modern art marched across Western Civilization like the jackboots of the Nazis.  The same thing that they did to literature with criticism by experts and deconstruction, they did to art, to the detriment of all.  This is one of my favorite paintings by that artist, La Charité by Bouguereau.  Each child is a theme, a depiction of one aspect of charity, as exemplified by a mother, the ultimate giver.  Attention, sustenance, comfort, shelter, education.  And the theme of the vessel of money poured out haphazardly for her children.  Women are always a picture, the glory of man.  They depict the care of husbands, or fathers.  The work of their hands is made manifest in her eyes.  Just as the Church on this earth is the glory of Christ, we are his bride.  He pulled us from the mud, he took on all our past hurts, all our past abusive relationships and he made us beautiful(Ezekiel 16).  We are his image.  He always made the women he was amongst more beautiful.

We evangelicals tend to make a wide birth around Catholics, especially the idea of Mary.  But if you understand paintings like this, which are not overtly religious you can take what you learn back to the multitude of Madonna paintings and appreciate them a bit more.  We see many of the themes he depicts here in those Madonnas.  It makes you marvel that the second person of the Godhead, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, humbled himself to the utmost fragile state, to the care of a woman. In addition, we can echo with Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear.”(Luke 1:42)  We see also Christ mourning over his city, Jerusalem, which had become Babylon. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing”(Luke 13:34,35)

So while you don’t have to be an expert, and I’m not even sure anyone should, we should all appreciate what Christendom has done for art before modern man began his vivisection.