More to von Max than his monkeys
Painted in 1889, “Monkeys as Critics” — sometimes called “Monkeys as Judges of Art” and “The Jury of Apes” — is the best-known descendant from the evolutionary brush of the Czech Gabriel Cornelius Ritter von Max (1840-1915), and how could it not be? It’s adorable and, if you think artists take themselves too seriously, it’s also hilarious.
But Max also painted this:
This is “The Ecstatic Virgin Anna Katharina Emmerich”, done four years earlier. Von Max had monkeys, but Sister Anna had better visions. Von Max got to her long before popes and movie stars began paying heed to Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824).
Anne’s dirt-poor farmer parents sold her off at age 12 and she toiled for other folks until she escaped to the convent 16 years later. There she began experiencing mystical visions that came with massive headaches, as if a crown of thorns was in place. This continued after Napoleon’s kid brother, the King of Westphalia, closed the convent and she found herself doling out miracles of faith and health to her fellow downtrodden. In 1813 the stigmata that appeared on Anne’s hands and feet convinced an episcopal commission that she was indeed divine.
“The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to the Meditations of Anne Catherine Emmerich”, published in 1833 and parlayed in part into Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”, contained, among many other revelations about the New Testament, a description of Ephesus, a city that had yet to be excavated, which helped archaeologists discover the house of the Virgin Mary. Pope John Paul II beatified Anne in 2004, though not for her Dolorous Passion, which proved theologically problematic.
Not for von Max, a mystic to the marrow. See the rest.
