ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET
Sermon preached by the Fr. Gerald Beauchamp at Evensong and Benediction on the Sixth Sunday of Easter, 27th April 2008
Readings: Zechariah 8. 1-13; Revelation 21. 22 - 22. 5
At Evensong last Sunday I preached about hope. Then the second lesson (as this evening) was from the Book of Revelation. I said that hope, symbolised as the new Jerusalem descending from heaven has become more difficult to believe in, in the modern world. Hope isn't something physical hidden beyond the clouds nor can it be easily constructed here on earth.
Since the end of communism in Europe people have placed their hopes in markets and rising living-standards but that, too, looks under threat. So, what hope for hope? I ended by saying that we can help meet the spiritual hunger of our day by offering hope instead of trying to have it or readily make it concrete.
But that still begs the question 'How?' How do we 'do' hope? Well, one way is to open our eyes and learn from those who have gone before us. The Book of Revelation is a series of visions. So let's look around us. This evening I'd like to talk about something that I saw last week.
At the National Gallery currently there is an exhibition of paintings by Pompeo Batoni. Batoni lived 1708 - 1787. I'd vaguely heard of him before this exhibition and remembered only the disparaging remark that he was the 'fag-end of the Renaissance'. In some ways that's true. He wasn't a genius like his predecessors Raphael or Titian nor was he forward-looking like some of his contemporaries such as Boucher or Fragonard but as soon as you enter the exhibition you realize that he was a very fine painter.
Perhaps because he had originally trained under his father as a goldsmith in Lucca before he came to Rome to seek his fame and fortune as a painter he understood the chemistry of painting. He also had a wonderful eye for detail. This is obvious in the first picture in the show: St Philip Neri receiving a vision of the Virgin and child. The saint's face is painted in profilewith marvellous characterization. The detailing of the embroidery on his vestments is exquisite.
Batoni soon gained a reputation and was eagerly sought out by new money in the shape, indeed the very fashionable shape, of young men from the British Isles who were on the Grand Tour. Anyone who was someone had to return home with a Venetian canal scene by Canaletto and their portrait painted in Rome by Batoni. The exhibition contains several full-length portraits of red-coated bright young things in full swagger.
Batoni did well but his life was not all joy. His first wife died and you can see from some of the smaller and intimate portraits of women in the exhibition that women were very important to him. When you have it all materially but lose your emotional support life can seem at an end. But Batoni married again. He married a much younger woman who was reputedly one of the most beautiful women in Rome.
The highlight of the exhibition has to be a picture of the Holy Family painted around 1760 when Batoni was at the height of his powers. The Virgin is clearly influenced by Raphael. His wife was possibly the model. She has magnificent platted hair. The child places his hands around his mother's neck with great tenderness and on the left of the picture the much older Joseph (possibly a self-portrait) stares at them with wonder and adoration. Here is the Holy Family: a Trinity for the Common Man.
Across Mary's lap there is a marine blue fabric with many folds. On top of this there is a white cloth (a nappy) on which the young Jesus is seated. Jesus looks as if he is on the crest of a wave. He conquers the sea. Tears and oceans are no more, as the Book of Revelation assured us last week.
In this evening's second lesson John the Divine turns from water as a negative (chaos, a destroyer) towards water as a positive. It is essential to creation. Just as the dew of heaven nourishes the land when the exiles return from Babylon in the Book of Zechariah so water is portrayed by John the Divine this evening as the river of life. Water can be tamed and in so doing becomes the bearer of life. The fruits of the earth flourish. People are fed and at peace. The vision of the new Jerusalem is realized.
Apart from the blue on Mary's lap the other colours in the painting are muted. Her dress is a silver-apricot colour and blends into the flesh-tones of her naked son. Over her dress she wears a shawl of pale olive green symbolic of new life. Joseph is painted in earthy browns. Here is humility - 'humus' (earth): reality.
The paintings following the Holy Family from Batoni's late period are much more intimate, less formal and less grand. They are sheer joy. Gone are the strident red outfits of self-important young men. With his eyesight failing (in the Holy Family Joseph is depicted holding his spectacles) he sees deeper into his sitters. Their personalities shine through. There's a very fine portrait of the actor David Garrick dressed fashionably in brown velvet. We can almost hear him declaiming the lines from Richard III for which he was famous: Now is the winter of our discontent ...
When we see a body of work representing a painter's whole life we can see the development of the style and the core values by which he lived. Batoni was a religious man (Who wasn't in the 18C?) but you have a sense that religion and hope in particular wasn't just a matter of formality for him. In some ways his age wasn't very different to our own. The old epitomised by Roman ruins was passing away and the new (new money in the pockets of the British) was making its presence felt with a vengeance.
Batoni could easily have become a lost human being: carried away by celebrity. He could have become lost in bereavement and turned in on himself in grief. But instead he kept looking, looking out for love and beauty and he found it. He received what he hoped for and the final portraits with their free brushwork, beautiful colour and glorious character are testimony that hope is possible, can be realized and in turn changes us.
Batoni was a man of his age. He lived in hope and he left a legacy that inspires. Who could hope for more?