A new tapestry, featuring a 14-foot-high depiction of the cathedral’s namesake, was unveiled at Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on the day that the Catholic Church celebrates the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God.
“That’s always been the whole idea [of the new tapestry],” said Brother Hilarion O’Connor, the cathedral’s operations manager who helped shepherd the project. “The idea being the completion of the cathedral, completion of the tapestries.”
Part of that completion might have felt long overdue. If you’ve walked through the long nave of the cathedral, you’ve likely gazed upon the more than 130 images of saints depicted on tapestries hung on opposite walls.
Perhaps the most well-known of the cathedral’s artistic features, those tapestries were made by Californian painter and tapestry designer John Nava, who used real-life models for his depiction of the “communion of saints.”
But what a visitor did not see until Jan. 1, 2021, was a depiction of the most important saint of them all: Mary, whose many titles in Catholic tradition include “Mother of God” and especially for Angelenos, “Our Lady of the Angels.”
And now she has arrived, luminous, in a blue robe that distinguishes her from the saints in the nave, who now seem to look up at her, and that Nava portrayed in muted, mostly earth tones that compliment the cathedral’s natural stone.
“She is the archetypal mother, I didn’t want her to be imposing, rather, I wanted her to be open, receptive, sympathetic,” said Nava, who studied art in Florence as a young man and visited many of Europe’s cathedrals, a good deal of them dedicated to Mary. As he did with his “communion of saints” that line the wall, Nava said it was important for this final tapestry to integrate the Church’s ancient tradition and history with contemporary people and times.
“I wanted to connect it to the New World,” he said. “The greatest image of Mary in the new world, I believe, is the Virgin of Guadalupe. That’s why in her robe, I put in that floral pattern from the Virgin of Guadalupe, to refer to that figure.”
Full story at Angelus News.
Very beautiful, in direct contrast to the Taj Mahony itself….
An absolutely boring waste of a huge wall, and an insult of an image of our Blessed Mother.
Xavier, what is it about that image that you think insults Our Lady?
How about unavailing “The Traditional Latin Mass” as well as Our Lady?
RA, did you really mean the unavailing of the TLM?
un·a·vail·ing
adjective
achieving little or nothing; ineffective.
Previously, it seemed you asserted it was the solution to virtually all church problems.
The face looks like Kim Kardashian.
???
Do you know what the Blessed Mother looks like?
Although she seems to vary in apparitions, she did originally appear more Armenian than Irish.
My bet is that she looked more Sephardic Jewish in her original persona, like the picture on St. Juan Diego’s tilma. Oh, I forgot they say Our Lady of Guadalupe looks Mestiza, not Sephardic, but I think she looks both.
I have it on good authority that she resembled Linda Darnell. As you are really “into” proof, check out “Song of Bernadette:.
You guys are making me laugh in a rather boring depressing day, where I cannot find some bills I need to pay.
How’s that for elementary poetry?
Keith,
Ironically an uncredited role.
Shows up on IMDB for me.
would it have been too much if her eyes were depicted as even a teensy bit open? even in the pieta Our Lady’s eyes are looking down but open. and probably in almost all Marian art,there Mary is gazing outward. in the tilma of Guadalupe he refers to, her eyes look down,but are open. this depiction of Mary is almost the exact size of la Guadalupana,but am i wrong in feeling that she is just to small for the setting? Not having visited in person i can ‘t judge well, but she needs to be allowed to have more physical presence in her namesake cathedral.
In this tapestry, the Madonna’s face does not look sublime and holy, to me– it looks too “earthy,” unhappy, and downcast. Sorry, but I prefer to pray with a depiction of the Blessed Mother that looks holy, sublime, and heavenly, with arms outstretched, blessing her earthly children that come to her in prayer! And where are the Angels, in this tapestry?? I thought there were supposed to be Angels, too! “Our Lady of the Angels,” is the Cathedral’s Patroness!
I don’t like having the map ofLA replaced. There was a great symbol in that tapestry. There should be nothing bigger than Jesus on the altar. This lessens the experience of our Cathedral.
There was much prayer and thought put into the other tapestry. Sorry, I love Mary too, but this is not a way to honor her.
I was told that men have to make their mark.