Bach's Actus tragicus

J.S. Bach composed the cantata Gottes Zeit is die allerbeste Zeit ("God's time is the very best time") around 1707, when he was a young man.  As Ken Myers observed in his column,

[It] is both a musical and theological tour de force. In this 20-minute-long work (also known as Actus tragicus) Bach organizes biblical texts, Lutheran melodies, and instrumental textures to convey the comforting message of the gospel in the face of death. ... This remarkable and confidently assuring work should be much better known than it is. So now: go hear it. Be comforted and amazed.

See, for instance, this video of a performance by the Netherlands Bach Society.

B.E. Murillo, The Two Trinities, 1675-1682.  (Image: Web Gallery of Art)

Today is Trinity Sunday.  Murillo (1617-1682) was a Spanish Baroque artist who painted many hopeful, beautiful religious paintings despite his harsh life and the difficult times in which he lived.  This image combines the Holy Trinity (the three Persons who are one God) and the Holy Family.  According to the Web Gallery of Art:

The Christ Child is raised on a dressed stone, both a compositional device to set him at the apex of a triangle in the centre of the painting and symbolic: 'thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion...a precious corner stone, a sure foundation' (Isaiah 28:16). As the clouds part to reveal the divine light, their shadows temper the bold red and ultramarine blue, the apricots, pinks, gold and white of the highlights to a wonderful overall harmony, a haze of grey, sky-blue and saffron.

The Ascension of the Lord

John S. Copley, Ascension, 1775 (Image: Wikipedia).

From Acts 1:9-11:

When Jesus had said this, the apostles saw him lifted up, and a cloud caught him away from their sight. And as they strained their eyes towards heaven, to watch his journey, all at once two men in white garments were standing at their side. Men of Galilee, they said, why do you stand here looking heavenwards? He who has been taken from you into heaven, this same Jesus, will come back in the same fashion, just as you have watched him going into heaven.

The Last Supper

Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper, 1497-1498 (from Web Gallery of Art)

Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, The Last Supper, is on the wall in the refectory (dining room) of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan.  According to the Web Gallery of Art,

The real dining room appears to be continued in the perspectivally painted one, but on a higher level: the prior's table is upstaged by that of Christ and the apostles above. Christ and the apostles seem to have taken their place in the monk's dining hall in Milan, as it were. The emphatic gestures of the larger-than-life-size, heroic figures would have contrasted once with the quiet, controlled meal of the monks. A sublime, sacred drama overshadowed the worldly meal and focused the brothers' attention religious meditation. Leonardo depicted a specific moment of the Last Supper: Christ has just announced that he will be betrayed by one of the disciples, and the community of apostles reacts with agitation and questioning.

That is a coincidence: my mother's parents had a copy of this in their kitchen, above their kitchen table. 

Sea at Ogunquit

Edward Hopper, Sea at Ogunquit, 1914 (from https://whitney.org/collection/works/6077)

To celebrate Maine's bicentennial (Maine's secession from Massachusetts was part of the Missouri Compromise), the USPS has issued a stamp that features Edward Hopper's 1914 painting Sea at Ogunquit.  Hopper expressed his views on art in the following Statement ("Statements by Four Artists," Reality, Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 1953, via Wikipedia):

Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination. One of the weaknesses of much abstract painting is the attempt to substitute the inventions of the human intellect for a private imaginative conception.
The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm and does not concern itself alone with stimulating arrangements of color, form and design.
The term life used in art is something not to be held in contempt, for it implies all of existence and the province of art is to react to it and not to shun it.
Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great.