Moments of empathy and expectation

As Easter approaches, many contemplate the critical events of Holy Week. These have inspired historic artists, from Da Vinci to anonymous sculptors, and modern creatives. Understand more about their work. Watch this set of short videos from the Visual Commentary on Scripture.

Nick Jones

Nick is the senior editor of Seen & Unseen.

A medieval painting of angels holding the dead Christ.

Bellini's Dead Christ Supported by Two Angels.

Giovanni Bellini, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

To better understand the events of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holly Saturday and Easter Sunday, and the art works inspired by them, view and listen to these visual commentaries. Curated by The Visual Commentary on Scripture team of theologians and art historians, they give insights into the historical and contemporary cultural responses in art

The Visual Commentary on Scripture is a freely accessible online publication that provides theological commentary on the Bible in dialogue with works of art.

Maundy Thursday: a global feast

On Maundy Thursday, Christians remember the meal Jesus ate with his disciples known as The Last Supper. This film explores the textual and cultural traditions that inspired three works of art of the Last Supper. It discusses two fifteenth-century paintings, one by Ercole de' Roberti and the other by Leonardo da Vinci, and a 20th century print by Japanese artist Sadao Watanabe.

Find out how the cultural context of diverse communities around the world drives responses to The Last Supper - from high altar pieces with lock and key, to common dining experiences across the centuries.

Good Friday: hope in the darkness

Good Friday is a ‘culminating moment’ that ‘provides evidence of both human violence and cruelty, as well as of grace and human love and charity.’ This film focuses on the Crucifixion of Jesus which is remembered by Christians on Good Friday. It discussing the ‘feast of imagery that is the Altarpiece with Scenes from the Passion of Christ carved by an unknown artist from Antwerp in the early 16th century.

Holy Saturday: considering life and death

Holy Saturday considers the time spent in the tomb by Jesus. This film focuses on a type of religious image known by its German name, an ‘Andachtsbild’ (plural Andachtsbilder). These types of art works shows Christ in his suffering or death, extracted from a narrative context to form a highly focused, and often very emotionally powerful, focus of devotion.

Capturing moments before and after the crucifixion - of a scarred back, bruised knees, a mouth open for first breath, they compress ‘the spirit of a bigger story’ into single images that encourage empathy. Works carved or painted by the hands of Hans Leinberger, Juan de Valmaseda and Giovanni Belllini.

Easter Sunday: the loving look

On Easter Sunday, the Resurrection of Jesus is celebrated. In this film, VCS Director Ben Quash interviews filmmaker, playwright, author, and photographer Wim Wenders about his photograph 'The Road to Emmaus' (2000), where the risen Jesus is said to have met his disciples.

Wenders shares how he found and photographed The Road to Emmaus, capturing not only his favourite story – a ‘real road movie’ – but also creating his favourite image. The academy nominated director also explains why he loves to photograph places, and compares the ‘critical eye’ and the ‘loving eye’ that a documentary maker can use.

Snippet

Belief

Creed

Leading

21 April 2025

2 min read

Pope Francis leaves a complex world

He was loved for all the same reasons he was ardently criticised.

Jack Chisnall

Jack Chisnall is a former gag teller and Oxford Theology graduate, combining the two at Holy Fooling.

The Pope kisses a foot he has just washed.

Pope Francis kisses the foot of a woman inmate of the Rebibbia prison.

The Holy See.

The Holy Father, Pope Francis, died this morning, at the age of 88. Fittingly, he went to life after witnessing one last Easter fire. He had seemingly half-recovered from a month of hospitalisation due to pneumonia, and even blessed the crowds gathered at St Peter’s Square yesterday from the balcony. May he rest in peace.

He was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, in 1936, to two Italian immigrants seeking a life away from Mussolini’s fascist rule. Sadly, this would not spare their son from dictatorships - in the 1970s, Argentina’s government was seized by a military junta, violently opposed to socialism.

But this bit of biography is vital for understanding the nuanced figure of Pope Francis.

In 1958 he entered the Society of Jesus, a religious order founded with half an eye on responding to the Protestant Reformation. Their origins in apologetics and counter-dialogue have given the ‘Jesuits’ a reputation for softness on doctrine. Choosing the papal name ‘Francis’ when he was elected on 13th March 2013, some saw an indication that this Pope was a reformer.

Many painted Francis with this brush during his pontificate, and with reasonable cause. In 2021, the Pope restricted the use of the Traditional Latin Mass, a move which gravely offended communities who regretted the move to vernacular language services in the 1960s. In 2023, he confirmed that priests may bless people in “irregular unions”, such as same-sex and remarried couples, though not as a blessing of the union. He has been seen as a wind of change - open-hearted, popular, and genuinely humble in his servant leadership.

But during his time as the head of the Argentinian Jesuits, the young Fr Bergoglio was outwardly a conservative, opposed to the left-aligned Liberation Theology that swept through the Latin American conferences and seminaries of the era. As Pope, he could be as gruff and traditional as they come. His answer to an interviewer's question about whether women can be admitted to Holy Orders in 2024 began with a blunt “no”. He found himself in hot water when using negative slur for gay people in a frank talk about the atmosphere of some Catholic seminaries.

Too liberal for the trads, and too traditional for the libs. Who was Pope Francis? What I think he learnt from the military takeover of the 1970s was the cost of idealism, at either end of the political spectrum. He was, it seems to me, a pragmatist. Not an academic like his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, and, unlike Pope St John Paul II, there was no clear-cut political object in the form of the dissolving USSR. Francis was Pope within a far more complex world, increasingly lacking a clear moral bedrock, and finding it increasingly hard to respond to massive technological and social change.

Francis will be known for his attempts to strike balances in all of it - to plead for change, but stay closed elsewhere. He was loved for all the same reasons he was ardently criticised. Such is our polarised time. As a Catholic, I happily do not have to worry all that much about whether his successor will follow, or depart, from his mould. With a conclave imminent, it is the Holy Spirit’s work now.