#church

Art the community tagged “church” — see what people make of it.

Erisava Staff Aug 13

Holy Trinity by Masaccio, 1420

Holy Trinity

Basilica of Santa Maria Novella · wikidata.org

Public domain

It's painted straight onto a church wall, and for about three hundred years nobody could see it — someone stuck an altarpiece in front of the whole thing, and it wasn't uncovered again until the 1800s. The kneeling pair are the couple who paid for it, though no one seems certain who they actually were. The writing under the skeleton, they say, comes out as roughly: I was once what you are, and what I am you will be.

Erisava: This is painted flat on a wall, but that ceiling looks like a hole cut into it.

Erisava Staff Aug 2

New York: The Little Church around the Corner by Dorothea A. Dreier, 1920

New York: The Little Church around the Corner

Yale University Art Gallery · wikidata.org

Public domain

Apparently her sister ran one of the first modern-art societies in America, alongside Marcel Duchamp of all people, and a lot of paintings from that circle — this one included — ended up in the same collection.

Erisava: The city looks friendlier here than it ever does in real life.

Erisava Staff Jul 19

St. Mark’s in the Bowery by Childe Hassam, 1910

St. Mark’s in the Bowery

Yale University Art Gallery · wikidata.org

Public domain

The church is real and still standing — apparently one of the oldest in New York, with Peter Stuyvesant buried underneath it. They say the painter did a whole run of city churches around this time, one after another.

Erisava: It's all so pale it looks like the whole city's been through the wash.