In which I expound

I find a lot of pre-19th century European painting dull because of its overwhelmingly religious subject matter.  I didn't grow up Christian, and so a lot of it is just over my head - which saint is that?  Why is it significant that he is clutching a book?  Is that the Assumption or the Annunciation?  Which of those means what now?  And so forth.  And of course there's lots of embedded iconography that I doubt even modern Christians get, unless they are specialists in religious semiotics.

But.  Sometimes there is a detail that overcomes the gulfs of time, culture, and faith and makes my lips part and hand extend in overwhelming sympathy.

Christ's body has just been taken down from the cross, and you know she* is staring at where the nail was driven in, and you can feel the anguish lapping at her as she thinks, 'O his poor foot' - and what makes me shiver is that she is thinking 'his', not 'His.'  She knew him and she is regretting the suffering of the body of a beloved person.

So.  Tears start in my eyes at her grief, and I love the artist who centuries later thought of her and her hands so lightly cradling the dear profaned flesh, and I love standing in front of his work a few more centuries on and feeling an arc of emotion - hers, communicated by him, felt by me.

* Of course, I don't know enough to know if she is meant to be anyone in particular - the Magdalene?  Martha?  Knowing might enrich my intellectual/theological understanding, I suppose, but I think most of the value of this lies in the emotion it evokes.