No white tie and tail coat here, but "'The Boss" looking great, as usual.
In the old days there was a certain herculean beauty seen only in prelatial portraits (and they were always so ably undertaken back in the day).
They knew how to pose then: seated with breviary, draped damask in background and shielded by the resplendent ferraiolone in readiness for a public function.
The Church has envisaged so much for us that we never use and it's a pity bishops don't pose in the ferraiolone anymore.
(Photo taken from a book).
4 comments:
Today one must be happy to see a prelate or bishop in a more or less fitting "clergyman". Look at the scandalous attire of dozens of members of the french episcopate. But it is sensless to the regret bygone times of Cardinal Spellman and other outstanding champions of faith. Those times are unfortunately forever gone when it was accurate to call a cardinal "prince of church". Nowadays petit-bourgeois minalism and canted pauperism is en vogue.
"minimalism and canted pauperism" unless of course you catch a snap shot of a bishop in his first class airplane seat, relaxing at his house in the Poconos or Jersey Shore, shopping in Brooks Brothers for his day off, dining at the Union League, collecting his $5-$10/head Confirmation stipend, or on his way to the opera or theatre with his season tickets in hand.
And the ring is important.
A pre-conciliar prelate or bishop
always exhibited the Roman virtue of "gravitas".
You see an example of this virtue in all Roman sculptures & portraits of antiquity. The Catholic hierarchy inhereted the virtue of "gravitas" and unfortunately abandoned it after the Council.
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