{"id":4779,"date":"2025-07-29T10:21:56","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T14:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4779"},"modified":"2025-07-29T10:21:56","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T14:21:56","slug":"a-thing-of-beauty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/29\/a-thing-of-beauty\/","title":{"rendered":"A Thing of Beauty"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

On August 15, 1943, Allied planes dropped high-explosive bombs on Milan, Italy.

Their goal was to drive Axis forces, loyal to Hitler\u2019s Germany, from their strongholds in the city.\u00a0

Despite the intentions of Allied pilots to spare, if possible, Milan\u2019s irreplaceable art treasures, a bomb fell within 80 feet of the Convent of Santa Maria della Gracie.\u00a0The shock wave collapsed the roof, the cloister, and most of the walls.

Art lovers the world over were plunged into despair.

On one of the walls was Leonardo da Vinci\u2019s Last Supper, <\/em>which \u2013 along with da Vinci\u2019s Mona Lisa<\/em> \u2013 was arguably one of the world\u2019s two most famous paintings.\u00a0

Da Vinci\u2019s masterpiece, which he had painted directly onto the plaster of the convent\u2019s wall in 1495, had always been fragile. Within the first century of its life, its colors had already begun to fade. Humidity issues plagued preservation efforts.

When Napoleon\u2019s troops briefly bunked in the convent, several soldiers used the face of Jesus for target practice. Infamously, soldiers in the same army would later be accused of taking potshots at the nose of Egypt\u2019s Great Sphinx.\u00a0

Local officials and Monuments Men, leery of the dangers of war in the 1940s, had protected the convent\u2019s wall with sandbags. They had to wait two long years, however, before finding out if their efforts had been in vain.

In August 1945, after all the shells had stopped falling, they began the slow process of peeling back sandbags and scaffolding.

Leonardo\u2019s master work, though seriously shaken, was intact.\u00a0

Having recently endured novelist Dan Brown\u2019s ludicrous claims in The Da Vinci Code, <\/em>it\u2019s still around to be cherished by future generations.

All this drama begs a question, however: Why should anyone care about blobs of paint that someone brushed onto a wall 500 years ago?

Social activists would insist on prioritizing human welfare.\u00a0We should focus on food.\u00a0And jobs.\u00a0And healthcare.\u00a0It matters more that the Italians survived the war than a mere painting.

Religious fundamentalists might argue that art doesn\u2019t really register on the eternal scale of things. Since our real work is to get people into heaven, why worry about bricks and mortar in this world?\u00a0 It\u2019s all gonna burn, anyways, right?\u00a0

But beauty is not trivial.\u00a0As beings made in the image of a lavishly creative God, our poetry, music, sculpture, and paintings truly matter.

Da Vinci\u2019s work is also part of a conversation that will far outlive any particular generation:

What is the meaning of life? Is there hope for the future?\u00a0Is Jesus who he said he was? If Jesus\u2019 chosen apprentices \u2013 the dozen men whom Da Vinci has arranged around the table at the Last Supper \u2013 failed him so miserably and yet still changed the world, does that mean there is hope for a stumbling disciple like me?

The walls of security around our own lives may seem to collapse from time to time.

But Da Vinci\u2019s painting reminds us that one thing endures: \u00a0

There is Someone at the center of everything whose love for us will always survive.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here On August 15, 1943, Allied planes dropped high-explosive bombs on Milan, Italy. Their goal was to drive Axis forces, loyal to Hitler\u2019s Germany, from their strongholds in the city.\u00a0 Despite the intentions of Allied pilots to spare, if possible, Milan\u2019s irreplaceable art treasures, a bomb fell within 80 feet of the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4780,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[641,311,966],"class_list":["post-4779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-art","tag-beauty","tag-leonardo-da-vinci"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4782,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4779\/revisions\/4782"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}