Tag: religious architecture

Postcard from Parma, Italy: A Cathedral packed with artistic distractions

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Completed in 1530, “The Assumption of the Virgin” rising high, higher up than this photo, up above in the cupola in the Cathedral in Parma attracts great attention. The Renaissance fresco is the work of Antonio da Correggio  (1489-1534), the pride of Parma, aside from meat and cheese. But there is so much distracting art in this cathedral, we ended up only with this image capturing a portion of two of the bottom corners of the star of the show.

The massive façade of the cathedral appears awkwardly dwarfed by a single tower, but this certainly was not the original plan. Atop an early Christian crypt, construction began in 1059. Following its consecration, the cathedral served the people of Parma only a decade before many of its walls came tumbling down in an earthquake in 1117.

The “new” façade, completed in 1178, presumably has thicker walls. The single Gothic belfry was added a century later. The planned twin tower never arrived.

 

Postcard from Cholula, Puebla, Mexico: Color my world Cholula

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The grid-like placement of diamond-shaped tiles and barber-pole-striped columns on the façade of Santa Maria Tonantzintla of Cholula are striking. As with many buildings encountered in the state of Puebla, it leaves you wishing you could take the colors and patterns home with you to apply liberally on years of bland beige architecture dominating much of the American landscape.

The church’s name clearly indicates the early fusion of Catholicism and indigenous beliefs by the attachment of Tonantzin, the earth mother, to Santa Maria. But the facade’s unusual design cannot prepare you for the colorful multi-dimensional indigenous baroque figures covering the interior of the 17th-century church on the outskirts of Cholula, Puebla, where, unfortunately, no photos were allowed. No spot is left without copious adornment.

But photographs can come in handy. Following a fire consuming the wood carvings inside San Francisco Acatepec in 1939, earlier photographs taken by Guillermo Kahlo allowed for their duplication in the 1940s inside the colorful talavera-tiled 17th-century church.

But wait, I so want to see the church behind that locked gate guarded by a rather portly San Miguel…. And so many more.

Postcard from Puebla, Mexico: Talavera tiles accent glittering gold

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Gilded to the hilt, the Capilla del Rosario provides a Cinderella-like setting for destination weddings in downtown Puebla. The chapel is dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary, who appeared to Saint Dominic (1170-1221) and presented him with a rosary to aid his efforts to combat heresy and recruit converts to Catholicism.

The chapel is “new,” added in the second half of the 17th century to the much older Templo de Santo Domingo, dating from the late 16th century. Templo de Santo Domingo boldly combines ornate gilded Baroque embellishment with seemingly incongruous folk-art-like, colorful talavera tile.

Most of these images are from the interior of the temple Santo Domingo, but the same is true in many of the city’s churches. Somehow the contrasting styles work together, the tiles conveying a comforting hominess preventing the opulence from overwhelming the faithful flocking to kneel in the pews.

But back to the rosary. Among the many things nuns never taught me was what to do with the beads of a rosary. About the only thing I understood about the rosary given to me by my godmother on the occasion of my first communion at age 6 was that I was not to wear it as a necklace when playing dress-up.

Even in the late 1950s, rosaries seemed to be used only by white-haired widows, mysteriously muttering over each bead for long periods of time. Now I know why; it’s complicated. According to one website:

A rosary is a string of beads with a crucifix. A short string of five beads is attached to the crucifix which leads to a large circular strip of beads made of five sets of one large bead and ten smaller beads, called decades. You begin on the crucifix with a Sign of the Cross and an Apostles’ Creed. Say an Our Father on the large bead and one Hail Mary for each of the next three smaller beads. On the next large bead, say a Glory Be to the Father, announce and meditate on the first mystery and say an Our Father. Say a Hail Mary for each of the following smaller beads, and end the decade with the Glory Be. Begin the cycle again with an Our Father, meditate the second mystery according to the same schema and so on for the third, fourth and fifth mysteries. You end with the Prayer After the Rosary and a Sign of the Cross.

Phew! But those are only part of the instructions, omitted from gift boxes containing rosaries. The five mysteries to be contemplated on each decade change according to the days of the week, meaning there are a lot more than five with which one must be familiar. The Joyful Mysteries are recited on Mondays and Saturdays and are counter-balanced by the Sorrowful Mysteries on Tuesdays and Fridays. The redeeming Glorious Mysteries are the focus on Wednesdays and Sundays, and then, there are my favorites, the Luminous Mysteries celebrated on Thursdays. Thursday rosaries probably are most popular with those footing the bills for the destination weddings as well; for the second Luminous Mystery relates to the miraculous conversion of water into wine for the guests attending the wedding feast at Cana.

For exterior views of some of Puebla’s churches, visit an earlier post, Almost a church on every corner in the “City of Angels,” and to see saintly shrines housed within, visit Saints to answer any prayer.