Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Guadalupe in Belgium

Here is a not very good photo of a lovely fresco at the Benedictine monks' in Leuven. It is part of a long series of frescoes on the life of Mary painted right after WWII by (if I remember correctly) a relative of one of the monks' whose father or brother had been ambassador to Mexico. Thus Guadalupe! All the other paintings trace the life of Mary from her birth to the Dormition, but this one has a little Mexican touch. The artist also incorporated buildings from the city around the monastery (a recent building, turn of the 19th/20th century, so only a hundred years old, and HUGE - there were a lot of monks in those days; not so today) and in one case a picture of one of the relatives. If my memory serves, it is the bearded man on the right in this fresco.

Bad photo because I didn't take my own camera along, just a cheap, light, disposable camera (mea culpa, Mother Nature) and took this photo with it, with a flash, in the dark of the early morning on my way through the cloister walk from my room to breakfast. The day I arrived one of the monks had shown me all the frescoes in detail, with commentary.

Click on the photo to enlarge. Fuzzy, but still interesting.

3 comments:

Paul said...

Too cool! I'm loving your travelogues (and foodlogues).

Anonymous said...

Oh, that gave me the biggest happy moment of the day. Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe really is EVERYWHERE!

Jane R said...

Isn't it grand? Who knew she was in BELGIUM?!