Graham Howes

CARITAS

Arts & Literature

“Brian Bishop has now provided the visitor with an exceptionally accessible, and user-friendly, companion on what can so easily, through contemporary, post-Christian eyes, seem little more than a physically demanding, and not always intelligible, exercise in visual theology. He not only writes with enviable clarity and lightness of touch, yet with a vivid awareness of the complex credal and civic politics of post-Tridentine Venice. Tintorreto himself would have surely welcomed this, and so indeed should today’s visitors.”

Inclusive yet Discerning

Preaching & Worship

“Brown takes us far further and deeper than his modest subtitle suggests. Drawing creatively yet critically on a wide range of material — from Calvin to Kierkegaard, from Bach to Pope Benedict XVI — he identifies 'a potentially central role for aesthetic and artistic imagination within religious life as a whole, and within the Christian life specifically.' Written with great clarity, high intelligence, and a refreshing open-mindedness, this powerful little book should do much to reactivate the aesthetic dimensions of Christian worship.”

The Beauty of Holiness

Arts & Literature

“A magnificent achievement, which effortlessly combines formal art-historical method and mature theological reflection to fashion a deeply felt, yet always accessible, fusion of both. Beautifully written and well-illustrated, Brian Bishop’s book is an outstanding addition to that small, but significant, body of recent publications which testify unequivocally to the still powerful interplay between Word and image, and especially that between Christian art, Christian experience, and Christian faith.”