The weather was a bit blah today, and so was I. I’m not sure why. Maybe, it’s because I didn’t sleep much last night. Anyway, sorry if I’m a little gray, a little crabby, a little out of sorts. After wandering through the National Gallery for a while, I think I’m more of a modern art person. I love Impressionism and all that it implies: how the colors bend and stretch a little, how the artist doesn’t have to say exactly what they mean to get the point across, but there’s something sort of cold and flat about history paintings, and the sheer amount of detail is difficult for me to sort through. In a way, that’s why I often lean towards poetry rather than fiction, which is easier to see in its entirety on a few pages. However, there were a few paintings that caught my eye today.
A figure of a weary woman stands amidst a room filled with paintings of Saints. Paolo Veronese’s The Dream of Saint Helena towers in its exhaustion. Helena leans sleeping against a window frame with her head in her hands against a dusty sky. Above her, two angels hover and wait to carry a cross into the realm of her dreams. The wall text explains that “Saint Helena, mother of the Christian emperor Constantine, vowed to discover the Cross on which Christ was crucified” (The Dream of Saint Helena). After Helena’s searching, the cross appeared to her in a dream. Yet, Veronese’s Helena seems unaware of the revelation that’s about to come to her. Her shadowed, closed eyes show no spark of recognition or even fear, but rather, close as if at the beginning of a long interval of rest. Even the angels above her appear to strain against the weight of the cross in their arms as they wait for just the right moment to fracture her inner world. Myths and legends aside, part of me wonders if she ever opens her eyes, or if, like an incandescent dream you wish you could inhabit, the defining moment of her life drifts softly by into forgotten memories.
But myths don’t lie. Even we question their realness, we rarely question their truth. Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo’s Mary Magdalene, situated just a few steps away from Helena and her dreams in the gallery, resides in a more certain, if still liminal space than Helena occupies. In Savoldo’s painting, Mary Magdalene contorts her body backwards to look at the viewer from under a mettalic, gray cloak that swallows her. Behind her, the sky isn’t quite dawn. A muddy sun just barely begins to smolder on the horizon line illuminating the clouds above it, but the clouds surrounding Mary are still as gray as the night she calls home. Yet, what strikes me the most about this portrait, is the way Mary’s hands are clasped around her ankles in an almost childlike gesture. She makes herself a little smaller, she crumples herself around her heart and lungs for awhile, and as she looks back at us, Mary smirks. She, evidently, knows something that I do not.
The wall text accompanying Savoldo’s portrait of the biblical figure explains that Mary Magdalene is resting beside “Christ’s empty tomb as the dawn rises on Easter morning” (Mary Magdalene). Aha, so that’s the secret hope you’ve been holding in, Mary. I think what Veronese and Savoldo’s portraits of these spiritual women portray is the moment before relief or maybe, rebirth. They position Mary Magdalene and Helena, women we think of from the distance of religion to symbolize an unattainable sense of virtue and strength, as humans in a season of waiting. Yet, while Mary can see the results of her efforts, Helena is a bit farther behind as she sinks into the aloofness of exhaustion and uncertainty. I guess today, if I’m honest, I feel a little closer to Helena as I try to shake off the weight of the rain and the night I spent awake. I’m reminding myself, though, as I sit in my hotel room at 11:45pm, that these liminal spaces that we wait inside, due to grief or illness or exhaustion, are worth working within to prepare ourselves for the rest that’s coming. If Helena and Mary Magdalene’s portraits tell us any truth, maybe it’s that the light we’ve been waiting for is just beyond closed eyes, just a little out of reach, but still ready for that moment when we choose to begin.
Sources
The Dream of Saint Helena. Wall text, Permanent Collections, The National Gallery, London.
Mary Magdalene. Wall text, Permanent Collections, The National Gallery, London.
Theatre in London U of A 