Catholic line art

When I was a boy, all my joy in books was from the artwork they contained. I still retain that delight, and my favourite books are the ones that attempt at least some type of illustration, or that have inspired illustrators and artists, whose work can be found online. Back then, it was easier and cheaper to reproduce art in colour, and the illustrations were all done in pen and ink - ideal for the kiddies to colour in. The Bible is a wonderful source for the best artwork our artists have produced in the past. But such dramatic and favoured stories as Tolkien's classics, the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, Copperfield's classics, etc. But what I want to talk about and publish here are examples of Catholic line art, which used to and still often do decorate our devotional books, our missals and our Bibles. I'm going to set out five examples of what I appreciate, and I would suggest that they would be more useful for the formation of our children and young people than the usual childrens-cartoon-type artwork we see in bookshops these days. Good art educates, and it does a better job than reams of text, and it works on both children and older people.

Let's start with the Blessed Trinity:

As a child, I was mesmerised by the precision in the depiction of flowing garments, whether these were worn by men and women, or by angels with trumpets. It's what got me to start drawing, too, although I never understood that drapery is drawn over bodies that are drawn anatomically-perfect first. So my figures were always out of proportion and ugly. Here's a Christ Reigning:

The realism of these Western icons is unique, for, in the Christian East, iconography is rather more stylised and can sometimes resemble what we Westerners would call caricature. But, once more, for a child of ten or eleven, that realism gave a credibility to the figures I knew about so well in the stories in my catechism classes and children's bible stories. Here's what I think is the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin in heaven, because those nice angels have crowns in their hands:

These were the types of line art we would have in our devotional books. The last two pictures in this post are one each from two of my favourite wood-cut and engraving artists. Prints made from wood-cuts and later from metal dies were for centuries the best way of making mass-copies of beautiful drawings. The first artist I have selected is the German Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) and this Crowning with Thorns is only one of a multitude of prints he created, always with his distinctive signature included:

The second engraver I wanted to mention is the Frenchman Gustav Doré (1832-1883), who created several extremely-detailed prints of Old Testament stories. Here's only one - the patriarch Jacob wrestling with an angel - but there are several more available to view online and to purchase as prints.