The Walters Art Museum

It was our second time that week visiting the Walters Art Museum. We had spent the morning at the Baltimore Museum of Art, admiring the Van Gogh and Monet and Degas and Matisse, but my sister’s fiancé had not yet seen the Walters. We were in the area, and admission was free. So, we returned.

My sister and her fiancé went to look at the Islamic art, and I wandered down a hall of Viking relics until it spat me out in a triangular room bisected by a half wall. All around me, the eyes of immortalized saints stared down from their perches on the walls (St. Denis’ from the head he clasped in his hands), surrounded by medals, symbols, and paintings of their ministries and martyrdoms. Sprawling along the width of the half wall was an enormous, French altarpiece. I had glimpsed it briefly on our first visit, but had kept moving, eager to see the Renaissance art the floor below. This time, I stopped.

Dozens of individuals--Mother Mary, the Apostles, crowds of saints and beggars--clustered around three figures of the Christ it portrayed: Jesus on His way to the cross, Jesus crucified, Jesus being born away for burial. At the foot of the cross, the eyes of each wooden icon glimmered with tears so bright that, in the flickering candlelight of Mass, I could have believed they were real.

Since that day at the Walters, I have spent many an afternoon wondering not only about the saints, but about those artists who came after them. They themselves may not have been witnesses to Christ, but they heard, they believed, and they created. And it is in these creations that we witness God.

Art is the fingerprint of the divine on our souls. It is a holy thing to create, and holy still to witness the creation of another. When we look at, read, or experience art, we glimpse the breath of God in the lungs of our fellow humans--even those who came generations before us.

Genesis tells us we were made in the image of God. We create because He does. We create because we must. We create because we crave intimacy and understanding. The Creator God is triune; we, in His image, need unity and companionship. And we need to make, and we need what we make to be seen. We need witnesses, and we need to witness.

I don’t know if the icon writer who carved out the tearful faces on the altarpiece knew that his work would move the soul of someone in 2021. I imagine that he hoped it would. I don’t know if any of my art will last long, or if it does, that it will go on to touch the future generations, to live alongside the great names that are still in the process of becoming. 

I can’t predict the future, but I can hope.

So, go, and engage in the holy work of sharing creation. Go, and be a witness.

Elizabeth Hidgens — Graphic Design