Saint Francis in Ecstasy Contemplative Space
I’m so happy to share that my exhibition, Saint Francis in Ecstasy Contemplative Space, is now on view at the Maliotis Cultural Center in Brookline, Massachusets. I’m deeply grateful to Tiffany M. Apostolou, whose words beautifully frame the spirit of the work.
Below is a glimpse of the installation, followed by the foreword.
Take a moment to think back on a moment in your life when you lost track of time, space and self – a moment when you felt so interconnected with others and nature that you felt almost disembodied.
Now, let’s consider ecstasy.
In antiquity, ecstasy referred to a state of losing one’s self entirely, to such an extent that you became one with the primordial elements of your being and with the universe and all its contents. It was typically associated with the spiritual experience.
This continues later with the dawn of Christianity, especially in the western parts of Europe. Tales of enlightened monks, saints, and virtuous people in such deep prayer their sense of physicality dissolved rendering their being one with a bright white light, or the sky, or the natural elements. Stories of ecstatic prayer lead to a sense of having become one with the divine, the same divine that lives within us all.
These tales became so widespread people would seek out such experiences any way they could. There was the belief that even contact with a saintly monk, an icon, or a talisman could help you reach such levels of worldly divinity that you could commune with the immaterial holy.
Among the saints such stories were heard, was Saint Francis, so much so, that his experience was rendered across history and countries by numerous artists.
Baglione, Bellini, Caravaggio, El Greco, among the most known to have sought to depict a saint in the moment which he lost all sense of physicality and ego and communed with the heavenly.
El Greco, an interesting example as he unified Byzantine and Renaissance pictorial traditions, reproduced the saint several times throughout his life and in all of them the central component is a seemingly living white light that shoots from the sky as much as it emanates from the saint. This light is as alive and sentient as the saint himself.
Saint Francis in Ecstasy, c. 1577-1580, Foundation Lazaro Galdiano focuses on the saint’s experience of deep prayer and ascension. He portrays a full-body unison with this mysterious, divine white light that is reaching toward him as much as Saint Francis is reaching toward it.
Later (presumably) in The Ecstasy of St. Francis of Assisi, c. 1600, 72 x 55 cm the Saint’s eyes may look somewhere between vacant and unfocused yet lit with this sharp light that is so bright it renders the sky and the surrounding nature as dark and out of focus. Light and saint are so alive and in unison, that the viewer may feel like an uninvited spectator. (View also AG Leventis collection AGLC 455)
Bellini’s rendition of Saint Francis’ ecstasy, nevertheless, might be one of the most popular renditions of the story, and the one that most inspired the works we are here to view and discuss today by Despina K. Cushing. In this painting, Bellini, true to the Italian Renaissance style, has rendered the saint in perfect perspective within his environment that balances the built and natural components that comprised it. There is deliberate distance between the saint and his hut, and the light here is diffused among everything, the unifying factor between the disembodied, ascended saint and the heavenly. The light becomes brighter and whiter and appears to move circularly from the sky to the saint facing upwards, and back around, similar to Giotto’s preceding depiction of the instance albeit in a far more Byzantine expression than Bellini. In Giotto’s work, which allegedly inspired Bellini’s, the light is indeed alive, and emanating from an angelic form in the sky.
In a way, we see the divine light becoming progressively less personified as we observe ecstasy in painting from Giotto onwards; and more so immaterial even if alive and sentient. As we trace the expression of light and divine experiences throughout art history, one can see this abstraction continues even further, yet seeking to depict light and attain a meditative state never ceases.
We can trace this in light works by James Turrell and Stephen Antonakos that alter the sense of space and its perception through the use of color and light. Another great example in a more painterly expression can be found in chapel painting installations by Mark Rothko that envelop the viewer in a hazy mass of colors fading into each other, beckoning them to lose themselves within.
It is exactly this hazy, light-filled emotional intensity that leads to a loss of our sense of the physical world that which we can trace within Despina K. Cushing’s works that we are here to see today. In her distinct style, the artist has masterfully layered color on surfaces that draw you in so intensely it feels magnetic. In the first work, Saint Francis in Ecstasy, you notice the hut within a vast landscape symbolizing the saint living in this world. The entire scene is flooded by a light that illuminates so vividly that everything appears as moving to become as one. Then, you turn to the second work, Saint Francis, where the hut is no longer visible, and it feels as though we have become one with it, the saint, and the now all-encompassing landscape. Despina K. Cushing calls you to focus even more on the saint’s unison with the sky and physical nature, and the work draws you in so strongly that the unison extends to you.
Seeing these works at the Maliotis Center only heightens this visual and physical intent of the artist, as the works are hung at an angle, calling you to approach closer, and as you pull away you realize you are surrounded by a landscape, and you too are capable of experiencing ecstasy and sensing the divine around us.
-Tiffany M. Apostolou
St. Francis in Ecstasy, oil on linen, 20 × 59 inches, 2022-2023 * Photo: Jason Mandella