The Via Pulchritudinis: Raphael at the Met

Towns and villages throughout the world contain treasures of art that express faith and beckon to us to return to our relationship with God. May the visits to places filled with art, then, not only be opportunities for cultural enrichment—that too—but may they become above all moments of grace, incentives to strengthen our bond and our dialogue with the Lord so that—in switching from simple external reality to the more profound reality it expresses—we may pause to contemplate the ray of beauty that strikes us to the quick, that almost “wounds” us, and that invites us to rise toward God.
- Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience, Castel Gandolfo, August 31, 2011

I returned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the magnificent Raphael exhibition for a second time before it closed on June 28. The exhibition was packed, as I expected. But with a bit of patience, I managed to get close to each work, read its label, and admire it in awe for as long as I wanted. (The staggering number of pieces—more than 170—meant, alas, that some received only a quick glance.)

I came away grateful that I’d had the opportunity to be immersed in Raphael’s ravishing work. However, I had the same thought that had struck me after visiting the museum’s stunning 2024 exhibition “Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350”: I wished the labels written by an art historian had been accompanied by those written by a theologian—or any Catholic priest. More discussion of the religious context would have been appropriate.

Of course one wants to read about the artist’s biography, technique, patrons, and influences. But as I gazed at the many exquisite Madonnas and other sacred subjects, I couldn’t help thinking how the essence of each work surpassed all those things. Indeed, it surpassed them so far that it would have been more fitting for viewers to spontaneously join together in reciting the Hail Mary or perhaps burst into “Salve Regina” before The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist in a Landscape (the Alba Madonna) rather than jockeying to get a better picture of it on their cell phones and then moving on to the next painting, as many were doing.

To be sure, it is Raphael’s unique genius in executing each Madonna that renders the painting, out of all the world’s countless Madonnas, so compelling. Ultimately, though, I don’t think of color or perspective or the rapidity of the brushstrokes when I gaze at these works of surpassing beauty. Rather, each painting directs my thoughts to the transcendent. 

A review of the Siena exhibition by Ariella Budick in the Financial Times noted that “[t]he Met presents the paintings [from Duccio’s Maestà altarpiece] as objects to be revered for their aesthetic qualities rather than for their scriptural resonance.” And yet, the attempt to divorce beauty from Christ is doomed not only in the case of such profoundly Christian art—as it obviously is—but even in that of nonreligious art. For, as St. John Paul II writes in his “Letter to Artists,”

Even beyond its typically religious expressions, true art has a close affinity with the world of faith, so that, even in situations where culture and the Church are far apart, art remains a kind of bridge to religious experience. In so far as it seeks the beautiful, fruit of an imagination which rises above the everyday, art is by its nature a kind of appeal to the mystery.

Both the Siena and Raphael exhibitions were splendid—quite literally divine. I suppose we can’t expect the secular art world to approach sacred Christian art any differently from pagan classical or atheistic modern art. The illumination of aesthetic aspects of the works by expert art historians with the aim of cultural enrichment certainly has value. But a purely secular experience of Christian art—or any great art—is a diminished experience compared to the full appreciation of both its earthly and transcendent aspects.

Budick struggles with this dilemma in her review, which begins by insisting that one can appreciate the Sienese art for its dazzling aesthetic qualities alone. Later, though, she asks if “secular viewers…see [religious art] falsely,” ultimately concluding that the Madonnas and Crucifixion scenes created by the great Sienese artists perform a quasi-religious role for the “godless” by “endow[ing] suffering with meaning.” Thus, “the blood spurting from [Christ’s] wounds invites us to contemplate the irresistibility of red”; and the artist, Simone Martini, is “reminding us that there is beauty in suffering precisely because it is the inseparable companion of love.” No Incarnation, no Redemption. She has answered her own question in the affirmative.

According to the concluding document of the 2006 plenary assembly of the Pontifical Council for Culture, “The Via Pulchritudinis, Privileged Pathway for Evangelisation and Dialogue,” “Highlighting only the aesthetic-formal aspect of works, without interest for the content which inspired such beauty…sterilise[s] art, stemming the living and life-giving stream of spiritual life, limiting it to the world of emotions.” But the secular viewer is only thus limited insofar as he can remain fixed in godlessness before great art. As St. John Paul II writes,

“Beauty is a call to transcendence…[T]he beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God which a lover of beauty like Saint Augustine could express in incomparable terms: “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you!”

As “The Via Pulchritudinis” declares, “it is Jesus Himself who is Beauty…Supreme beauty, splendour of the Truth, Jesus is the source of all beauty because, Word of God made flesh, He is the manifestation of the Father.”

Let us hope with Popes John Paul II and Benedict that Raphael and other great Catholic artists whose works fill the world’s museums succeed—despite relentless attempts to secularize their works—in evangelizing non- and lapsed-Catholic visitors alike who, being profoundly moved in a moment of grace, almost wounded by beauty, find a bridge to its divine source.