Henri Matisse's Chapel of the Rosary, Part 2
by Mary Elizabeth Podles
Matisse next turned his hand to the Ave mural, an image of the Madonna, to whom the rosary is addressed. He tried out images from the Litany of Loreto, which is generally recited after the rosary and evokes the Virgin in lyrical terms ("Mystical rose, Tower of David, Tower of ivory, House of gold, Ark of the covenant, Gate of heaven, Morning star"). One drawing, illustrating the phrase "Vessel of honor," makes a curious vase shape of Mary's dress; Matisse abandoned that design as unsuccessful. In the end, he settles upon "Queen assumed into heaven," at first surrounded by roses, but in the final version by clouds.
Matisse was deeply impressed by his first plane ride, and it has been suggested that these clouds are a memory of that flight. Within the clouds, Mary presents the infant Jesus to us like a baby standing proudly for the first time, but also in the pose of the Crucifixion, so that the mystery of the Incarnation also includes that of the Passion. Yet it is a visionary and eternal image, like that of St. Dominic, levitating without ground lines or perspective.
The single word "AVE," "Hail," which is repeated over 150 times during the recitation of the rosary, represents the people's prayer in this Rosary Chapel. At the same time, it should be recalled that the "Salve Regina" ("Hail, Holy Queen") was an important part of the Dominican liturgy, and was sung at the deathbed of every Dominican.
The Way of the Cross
The third mural, the Way of the Cross, decorates the rear wall of the chapel. Normally, the fourteen scenes from Christ's last day are separated as way stations for individual meditation, but Matisse has combined them into one panel. He was disappointed with the traditional imagery; the devotion only came into practice in the late seventeenth century, when religious art had already begun a decline into the sentimental. So instead he seems to have fallen back on a reading of Scripture.
In the drawings for this panel, Matisse begins with sketches full of narrative detail, then refines and abstracts them, moving from a naturalistic rendering to the barest minimum of linework that conveys the essence of the scene. He has left the numbers, so that we can weave our way in prayer along the torturous path that Christ followed. Matisse's image has been called a kind of cryptogram, demanding concentration and application to follow along. He applies a process analogous to that of contemplative prayer, in which the suppliant pares away all extraneous detail, concentrating and simplifying until nothing remains but the self and God. And there at the center is the face of Christ, the sole depiction of the human face in the whole decoration of the chapel.
If this spare and sorrowful Way of the Cross seems to strike a somber note, it should be remembered that the mural stands opposite the window of the Tree of Life. That is, through Christ's Passion and death, the paradisal Tree of Life is restored to mankind.
An Effect Like Music
A final word about the windows: Matisse has limited his color choices to blue, green, and gold. Blue, as he said, for the sky and the sea, green for vegetation, and gold for the light of the sun, fifteen windows for the fifteen mysteries of the rosary. The windows are the culmination of the bright vision of his cutouts, simplified into repeating patterns but made brilliant by the passage of light through the translucent glass.
The windows and the murals are not exactly opposite each other but are offset, creating a zigzag movement across the chapel's space. As the hours pass and the light shifts and changes, the windows throw ephemeral patterns of color across the black and white. It creates an effect like music, abstract and changing through time. The changing patterns are structured by the tile grids and the floor; the small black tiles of the floor even recall the square notes of Gregorian chant notation.
Mary Elizabeth Podles is the retired curator of Renaissance and Baroque art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the author of A Thousand Words: Reflections on Art and Christianity (St. James Press, 2023). She and her husband Leon, a Touchstone senior editor, have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
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