Friday Links, September 17, 2021
+ Now visible: a Cupid formerly overpainted on a well-known Vermeer.
+ Online seminar on Sigrid Undset’s Vows, with Katy Carl, starts Oct. 4.
+ Three ways Dante’s 700th death anniversary was observed this week.
+ Recent publications by Dappled Things editors and a contributor.
+ A retreat for artists & art lovers, with Dana Gioia & Kevin Turley, Sept 29.
Vermeer's 'hidden' Cupid is the enigmatic artist's latest mystery
Fr. Michael Rennier, Dappled Things Web Editor and contributor, shares this link to an article at the CNN.com Style page. It’s about the unveiling of a hidden painting of Cupid that was discovered behind layers of paint and dirt, in the background of Vermeer’s "Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window." On what we’re used to seeing as a blank wall behind the girl we now can see the revealed Cupid painting—which Vermeer also painted into several of his other works. This changes the whole visual effect and symbolism of the painting. For better or worse? What do you think?
Between Two Laws: Sigrid Undset’s Olav Audunssøn: Vows
You may have already seen in the past two weeks’ Friday Links that Dappled Things and Collegium Institute are inviting you to a digital campus seminar Between Two Laws: Sigrid Undset’s Olav Audunssøn: Vows this October. Discounted early bird registration ends this week on September 21.
Vows is the first volume of three in a new translation by Tiina Nunnally, previously published in translation in four volumes under the title, Master of Hestviken.
Dates & Time: 7 –8:30 PM EASTERN via ZOOM on the following Mondays: October 4, 11, 18, and 25.
Early Bird Registration (ends September 21 at 11:59 PM): $65. Registrants receive a print copy of the book.
Regular Registration (ends October 1 at 11:59 PM): $75.
Register here. To get a 15% discount, make sure to use our promo code: Dappled2021.
“The second session will be led by our very own Katy Carl, editor and novelist. Katy Carl continues Undset's tradition of great women writers in the Catholic literary world with her novel As Earth Without Water, which comes out this September. This is a unique opportunity to encounter a great novel with an up and coming novelist.
“Vows is the tumultuous story of love, feud, and commitment in medieval Norway. We will explore the Catholic journeys narrated in this novel as an expression of the division in the human heart between passion and promises and between the law of the world and the law of the Gospel.”—Terrence Sweeney, Collegium Institute Theologian-in-Residence
Dante’s Seven Hundredth Death Anniversary Observed
Following are links to three of the many ways the seven hundredth anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death was observed this past week, on September 14.
“Here is a reflection on Dante at Seven Hundred that I hope you'll read and enjoy. Along the way, you'll meet some really remarkable young college students whose ideas I am proud to share in the essay.”—DT friend and contributor, poet and professor James Matthew Wilson
Dante’s Message From the Underworld to Today’s World
COMMENTARY: The great medieval Catholic poet still has lessons to impart — 700 years after his death.
At National Catholic Register, Anthony Esolen, poet, professor, and translator of Dante’s Commedia, examines Dante’s persona at the beginning of Inferno. In this essay we find, among Esolen’s other expert reflections, that Inferno’s famous opening lines echo the Canticle of Hezekiah, “In the middle of my days I went down to the gates of the underworld.”
Images below: Dante Alighieri’s tomb exterior and interior in Ravenna, Italy. By Petar Milošević licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Click the link above or the audio player below to listen to a talk by Robert Royal, posted at the Center for the Restoration of Christian Culture at Thomas More College. Royal is the author of Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy, Divine Spirituality, the founder and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C., and editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing.
Publications by past & present Dappled Things editors—and a contributor.
Katy Carl’s As Earth Without Water, book launch
Congratulations to Katy Carl, DT Editor in Chief, on the publication by Wiseblood Books of her first novel, As Earth Without Water.
If you are anywhere near Houston, TX, on October 1, between 6:30 and 8:30 PM CENTRAL time, you are invited to join editor and novelist Katy Carl in launching her novel at a Catholic Arts Today event.
Already hailed by Harper editor Christopher Beha, as “a sharp and moving meditation on freedom, choice, and the creative life,” this book is destined to become one of your bookshelf friends for its nuanced read on complicated, contemporary culture.”
The official Wiseblood Books release date is September 23. You can preorder a copy here.
Congratulations also to the multi-talented Rhonda Ortiz, DT Webmaster, co-founder of Chrism Press, and author of the newly published novel Molly Chase: In Pieces, the first in a planned series.
Below is a charming video she posted today—as she delightedly unboxed a copy of her very first book!
The official Chrism Press publication date is October 1. Just to be sure you get the book, see this page with more information.
P.S. Rhonda wasn’t the only author to receive a copy of a newly published book in the Ortiz household yesterday. Her daughter also received a bound copy of Summer Stories with one of her own stories in it. The local library had a kids short story contest this summer. She entered and won third place in her age category. Like mother like daughter.
How lovely to see this. On the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, Archbishop Cordileone tweeted a link to my poem “Mater Dolorosa in Via Crucis” (which won First Prize in a Catholic Literary Arts competition and is published at CLA and at Catholic Arts Today). The poem is about the meeting of Jesus and His Blessed Mother on the way of the Cross, and the archbishop’s tweet included the drawing I did, which, like the poem, was also inspired by that meeting.
The Prophetic Calling of the Catholic Artist
September 29 5:30 pm PACIFIC/8:30 pm EASTERN via ZOOM.
A retreat for artists and art lovers.
With Dana Gioia and Kevin Turley, explore your calling as an artist or patron of the arts. Dana Gioia is a major poet, the former head of the National Endowment for the Arts, and the godfather of the Catholic literary revival. Kevin Turley is the author (with DT friend Fiorella De Maria) of "This Thing of Darkness," a novel about a spiritual battle between a possessed Bella Lugosi and a British expatriate journalist and war widow sent to interview the actor in his decline. This event is sponsored by Benedict XVI Institute under the leadership of San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone.
