A Mystical Winepress

Sunday, March 24, 2024 12:00 pm EST

Bridget Hoyt, Curator of Education for Academic Programs at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, explores a work of art on loan to the Museum from the Thoma Foundation. This eighteenth-century oil painting showing The Mystical Winepress is by an unidentified artist from Peru, probably Cuzco. The imagery in this painting is based on German woodcuts and Early Netherlandish paintings.

“Christ in the Winepress” as a prefiguration of the Crucifixion of Jesus had its beginnings in Northern Europe around 1100, and became common in hymns and sermons of the late Medieval period. The image is derived from scriptural texts including Isaiah 63:3 “I have trodden the winepress alone.” and Revelation 19:15 “He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.” Exegetes such as Saint Gregory the Great interpreted these sources to mean that “He has trodden the winepress alone in which he was himself pressed, for with his own strength, he patiently overcame suffering.”

In this painting, the apparatus of the winepress includes the cross. We see God the Father screwing the crossbeam more tightly, emphasizing the purposefulness of Christ’s suffering and eventual death. In the distance at the left is the vineyard from which the apostles carry grapes to the winepress. 

To the right, the Virgin Mary is a witness to her son’s suffering, and our hearts break with her as she watches her son suffer and die. During Holy Week, we enter into this story of suffering once again to better understand its mystery and its power.

On Palm Sunday at the beginning of Mass, we hear of Christ’s triumphant entrance into Jerusalem, but during the next gospel reading, we listen to a stunning reversal and what appears to be Christ’s defeat on the cross. However, Christ’s triumph is unlike any that we have ever witnessed before—it is a triumph of his sacrifice, of his blood. The Mystical Winepress image enables us to contemplate this divine mystery as we proclaim once more, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

This Lent, ThinkND invites you to join FaithND and the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art for a journey of Lenten discovery through some of the most significant liturgical paintings in the Raclin Murphy collection, challenging you to contemplate prayer, fasting, sinfulness, mercy, grace, and God’s infinite love from the perspectives of the artist’s gaze. To subscribe to the FaithND Daily Gospel Reflection visit faith.nd.edu/signup.

11 Likes

Share