Une Minute avec Marie
Faire connaître et aimer Marie
Seventy-five years ago, work began on the Our Lady of the Rosary chapel in Vence, on a hill above Nice, France. This chapel was the brainchild of a Dominican nun called Sister Jacques-Marie, who had cared for Matisse as a lay nurse during the Second World War. She thought of asking the celebrated painter to design and decorate the chapel of the community she would eventually join a few years later.
Matisse accepted, and Sister Jacques-Marie invited two Dominican friars, Fathers Couturier and Rayssiguier, both passionate about contemporary art, to discuss the project with the master.
I'd like to focus here on a small exchange found in the correspondence between Matisse and the Dominicans during the development of the chapel in Vence. This exchange seems to me to be indicative of the risks we can still run today. When it came to representing the Virgin Mary on one of the chapel's walls, the Dominicans suggested that Matisse depict her as "an Air France stewardess", to give her the characteristics of a modern woman.
The intention was commendable. But Matisse's reaction was not long in coming, and it was clearly negative. Reminding them that depictions of the Virgin and Child must respect the canons of traditional iconography, the painter even lectured the preachers that they would end up "losing people".
Beyond the artistic sphere, Matisse points to an element to which anyone involved in the Church, trained in faith and theology, must pay attention: to not "lose people". We must respect the faith of others, especially the most humble. And we would do well to remember that spiritual life and practice sometimes start with visual or intellectual representations that appeal to the most popular forms of piety.