Sacred Art in the Johnson Museum at Cornell University

Following up on my Thursday article about an exhibition at the Johnson Art Museum on the campus of Cornell University, here are some religious artworks from the museum’s permanent collection.

A statue of St Anne with the Virgin and Child, carved from a single block of oak in Flanders ca. 1500.
 

A portable triptych painted in Ethiopia in the mid- to late 17th century: the central panel of the Virgin and Child is apparently based on copies of the Salus Populi Romani icon at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, brought to Ethiopia by Jesuits; on the left side, the Resurrection and St George slaying the dragon; on the right, the Crucifixion.   

The Adoration of the Magi, painted ca. 1500 by an anonymous Flemish artist known as the Master of Frankfurt, active primarily in Antwerp from about 1480-1520. (He is called the Master of Frankfurt from two painting commissioned by patron in that city.)  

A limestone statue of the Virgin and Child (with surviving traces of the original paint), made in France ca. 1380.

The Appearance of Christ to Saint Ausias, ca. 1490, by the Catalan painter Pau Vergós, a member of a prominent artistic family in Barcelona. (“Ausias” is the Occitan form of the name “Elzearius.”) Elzéar de Sabran (1285-1323) was a prominent Provençal nobleman, who after a life of exemplary holiness, was canonized by a decree of his own godson, Bl Pope Urban V. The story depicted here is that when he had repented for his participation in war, Christ appeared to him and scourged him three times, which he accepted as his penance. (Note that the three scourges in Christ’s hand penetrate through his armor and draw blood.)  

A German statue of St George, made of linden wood in the second half of the 15th century. 

St James the Greater, ca. 1610-14, by El Greco and workshop.

A painted wooden bust of the Man of Sorrows, 2nd quarter of the 16th century, by the Italian sculptor Giovanni Mirigliano da Nola (1488-1558).

A Romanesque stylophore, i.e., a base designed to hold up a column, in the form of a lioness, thought to have been part of the portico over a side door of the cathedral of St Peter in Bologna, ca. 1200, attributed to the workshop of Pietro Alberigo. This sculpture was acquired and brought to the United States by Juliana Armour Ferguson (1864-1921), a devout Catholic, heiress to an enormous fortune from the Chicago-based Armour meat-packing company. This was one of hundreds of such items incorporated into her large mansion, built in the form of a medieval castle, overlooking Huntington Harbour on Long Island. It was rescued by workmen when the mansion was demolished in the early 1970s, but damaged in the process; the part at the bottom which was broken off was the heads of the lioness’ cubs.