Seeing Beauty From The Place of Prayer

A distinguished art critic was studying an exquisite painting by the Italian Renaissance master Fillipino Lippi one day. He stood in London's National Gallery gazing at the fifteenth century depiction of Mary holding the infant Jesus on her lap, with saints Dominic and Jerome kneeling nearby, but the painting troubled him. There could be no doubting Lippi's skill, his use of color or composition. But the proportions of the picture were slightly wrong: The hills in the background seemed exagerated, as if they might topple out of the frame at any minute onto the gallery's polished floor. And the two kneeling saints just looked awkward and uncomfortable.

Robert Cumming was not the first to criticize Lippi's work for its poor perspective, but he may well be the last to do so, because at that moment he had a revelation. It suddenly occurred to him that the problem might be his. The painting he was analyzing with clinical objectivity was not just another piece of religious art hanging in a gallery alongside other comparitive works. It had never been intended to come anywhere near a gallery. Lippi's painting had been commissioned as an altarpiece, intended to stand in a place of prayer.

And so, self-consciously, the dignified art critic in the public gallery dropped to his knees before the painting. And suddenly he saw what generations of art critics had missed. From his newfound position of humility, Robert Cumming found himself gazing up at a perfectly proportioned piece. The forground had moved naturally to the background, while the saints seemed settled - their awkwardness, like the painting itself, having turned to grace. And as for Mary, she now looked intently and kindly directly at him as he knelt at her feet between saints Jerome and Dominic.

It was not the perspective of the painting that had been wrong all these years -- it was the perspective of the people looking at it. Robert Cumming on bended knee had found a beauty that Robert Cumming the proud art critic could not. All these years, the joke had been upon the succession of experts standing, studying, and analyzing instead of kneeling humbly in prayer.

Peter Greig shared and, further, comments on this story in his book The Vision and the Vow saying this:

When -- like that art critic -- we drop the facade of pompous posturing and fall to the floor in prayer, we gain a new perspective on life that brings out beauty and grace in a world that had previously seemed so chaotic. Outwardly, nothing has changed: We close our Bibles, leave the worship time, return from retreat, and the same old stuggles and distortions present themselves as truth.

But while they may not have changed, we have.

Now we gaze up at the picture and find beauty and perspective where once we could only see faults and flaws. What's more, we begin to understand that we have a place in the overall composition of the picture -- kneeling among the saints in worship. And as we do so, the most wonderful shift takes place: Our vision is renewed to see JESUS right in the center of it all.

The following is a link to see Fillipino Lippi's Painting. Just scroll down until you come to his name and the painting will be to the side of his mini-bio. The Virgin and Child with Saints Jerome and Dominic