Science: Religious Art

Religious art, in modern times, has fallen from the liveliness of the Renaissance, when religion was civilization and men brought a homely vitality to their church art. John Singer Sargent’s* symbolic series of world religious history on the walls of the Boston Public Library is almost everywhere considered among the best of modern religious work.† At present Architect Ralph Adams Cram is working on a design for a sports window for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. His depiction of polo, golf, tennis, baseball, steeplechasing, cycling, handball, swimming, gymnastics, yachting, bowling, billiards, horse racing, rowing, track athletics, football, skating, hockey, soccer, fencing, wrestling, pole vaulting, boxing, trap shooting and motor boating is being hooted at, for lack of realism meets not with the approval of everyone. Charles C. Marshall, Manhattan lawyer and trustee of the Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin, last week flayed the idea in a letter to the Churchman: “If that [sporting] life is to be symbolized in it [the Cathedral], then the genius of the architect should find some way of connecting it in expression with the sacramental life. The architect’s design peculiarly subject to that curse of bad art-incongruity. . . .

“Even the Medieval Church felt the incongruity of such [mundane] decorations and invented the solemn theory that the carved grotesquery (gargoyles, dragons, animals and devils) was intended to represent evil spirits turned by divine power into stone. But it is inconceivable that any such theory can justify Mr. Cram’s design. If the plea is that the pugilists and the jockeys have been turned into stained glass by an angry God, it is rather hard on sports. If the plea is that churchmen play billiards and shoot at pigeons, it is superfluous. They do, and they do many other things that ought not to be represented on cathedral windows.”

* He died a bachelor April 15 ot last year (TIME, April 27) in London, where he had made his home since 1884, although of American parentage. Just now his sisters are erecting in the crypt of St. Paul’s, London, a large bronze crucifix in his memory. It represents Christ holding a chalice, with a figure on either side. He designed it for the Boston library.

† Jews consider his portrayal of the synagog as a fallen, ineffectual institution, a libel on their religion. Vandals befouled this particular mural with ink some years back.