Masterpiece recalled

We got up a little later than usual yesterday and enjoyed our special Saturday pancake breakfast, both made phone calls, and then it was time to cook lunch. Where does the time go to so quickly?

After lunch, I walked to Aldi's to buy some wine. I needed the exercise but it was pretty painful for much of the way there and back. There was nothing worth watching on telly, so we sat quietly in the lounge, Clare reading and me writing. One highlight after supper before we settled down, was a radio programme by Simon Scharma, in a series where he gives a guided tour of Europe's major art collections. Last week it was the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. This week it was the Prado in Madrid.

Not only is he a great enthusiast for his subjects, but he has a very graphic way with words which kindle the imagination when he is describing a great painting and putting it in its historical and social context. I felt no need to go on-line and visit the website containing images of the paintings he talked about, as his descriptions were so vivid. I realised this, as one of the paintings he talked about was Picasso's 'Guernica, which isn't in the Prado, but in Madrid's Museo Reina Sofia. It's a painting we remember well.

When I was priested, back in September 1970, I was asked what gift the parish could offer me to celebrate my ordination. I chose a big reproduction of 'Guernica' to fit on the Vicarage dining room wall, above the fireplace. In retrospect, it seems a little bizarre, given that most new priests ask for a stole or a chalice, but I guess, being teens in the early sixties, during the Cuba missile crisis, remembering what I'd learned from my parents about Nazi concentration camps and the Jewish Holocaust, plus the influence of Taize, I saw ministry in terms of reconciliation and building peace, through the sharing of the Gospel. 

That painting was a stark reminder of the suffering war causes, never to be forgotten. It had pride of place in several parsonages, until we moved to Geneva, some twenty two years later. It went into storage in our newly purchased home base, where we now live in retirement, and never made it back to a living room wall. It was too big in a smaller house, and after nine years tucked away in less than perfect conditions it began to deteriorate, sad to say, and ended up being recycled.

On my to-do list when the pandemic has abated and a sembance of normality returns to foreign travel, I look forward to a trip to Madrid, to see the Prado, and Picasso's Guernica in real life, for the first time.