Spotless Mirror

Fray Juan Sánchez Cotán (1560–1627) lived in Toledo, Spain, ­until the age of forty-three. In that city he was an esteemed painter. There he met El Greco (1541–1614), owned two of his paintings, and loaned him a significant amount of money. His still-lifes are among the high points of Spanish painting. In them we find his whole soul, which was enamored with asceticism. In them he stored up the fruits of his contemplation of the transcendent character of simple things.1 Despite his increasing success, Sánchez Cotán, who was well acquainted with the Franciscans, reveled more and more in humility, poverty of spirit, and silence. With his genius contemporary Lope de Vega—the phoenix of the literature of the Spanish Golden Age—he might have said: “My condition of littleness seems to me true greatness; and the things that make others great, because they really are not, seem little to me.”

In 1603 he decided to “die to the world.” He drew up his last will and testament, parted with all his belongings, and entered the Charterhouse of Granada, in Andalusia. There he found the rigor, simplicity, solitude, and silence to which he aspired. As Pope Pius XI acknowledged in the 20th century, the Carthusian order, ­founded in 1084 by Saint Bruno and Saint Hugh, never needed to be reformed, because its practice never deviated from its rule. At the Charterhouse in Granada, therefore, Brother Juan went on to lead an extremely austere life of prayer and contemplation. However, like Fra Angelico, he illuminated with his canvases and frescos the living and worship spaces of the monastery. Notwithstanding his ­exceptional talents, he considered himself to be the least of ­servants, and his benevolence, thoughtfulness, and admirable simplicity earned him a reputation for sanctity that is still alive in our day.

In 1617, Pope Paul V put an end to the theological ­controversies about the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Although he did not proclaim the dogma (Pius IX did so in 1854), he nonetheless imposed silence on all its opponents. To salute this decision, Brother Juan set out to paint the work that adorns the cover of this issue of Magnificat Mary is shown as the Immaculate Conception, facing the viewer, as though emanating from the ­celestial light through the working of the Holy Spirit who hovers over her. She is depicted as the Woman in the Book of Revelation: A great portent appeared in heaven, a Woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars (Rv 12:1). She is a young girl with golden hair, admirably dressed. Around her, the cloud through which God manifests his glory forms a mandorla. The scene unfolds above a landscape that ­represents the countryside of Granada, in which the viewer sees the Charterhouse on the left, then the ramparts of the city (like those of the heavenly Jerusalem), and in the background the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. In the foreground below and in the heavenly clouds at the right and left sides of the painting the artist depicted sixteen of the mystical attributes of the Immaculata, as they were sung in the litanies that developed into the Litany of Loretto. Starting from the upper left of the painting (the sun), then continuing along the foreground at the bottom, and finally ascending to the top right (the moon), here is the list of titles:

            Bright as the sun,

            Spotless mirror,

            Gate of heaven,

            Flowering stem of Jesse,

            Tower of David,

            City of God (the ramparts of Granada),

            Fountain of the gardens,

            Mystical rose,

            Well of living water,

            Lofty cedar,

            Precious olive tree,

            Enclosed garden,

            Like a lily among thorns,

            Seat of Wisdom,

            Morning Star,

            Fair as the moon.

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1 See two of his most beautiful still-lifes at the Magnificat above.

Pierre-Marie Dumont

The Immaculate Conception (c. 1617–1618), Fray Juan Sánchez Cotán (1560–1627), Museum of Fine Arts, Granada, Spain. © akg-images / Album / Oronoz.