Sister Wendy

I've been taking advantage of Amazon Prime this week to learn a little about art.  Sister Wendy is a nun who did a few series about art appreciation.  Three of those are available on Prime for free.

Sister Wendy's Odyssey and Grand Tour consist of ten minute episodes where the Sister visits various museums.  She focuses on about three pieces per episode, mostly older pieces and not overly well known works.  She gives a little info on the artists and gives her opinions on each piece.  I didn't always agree with her interpretations, but she has a passion for her subjects and an honesty about her feelings that was enjoyable.  The shortness of each episode was also a nice change of pace.

The third program is Sister Wendy:  Pains of Glass.  This is a 50 minute long piece that tended to drag at times.  The program looks at the stained glass at the King's College Chapel in Cambridge, England.  This is the most religious of the shows due to subject matter.  The discussions between Wendy and a Dean of the college were nicely detailed.  It's easy for us to forget today that for centuries, the Bible was in Latin and reserved solely for the clergy.  For the average person, religious art such as stained glass became the main means of understanding the Christian narrative.  The draggy bits came when they had long stretches of the Chapel Choir singing.  It was lovely, but I wasn't in the mood for it.