Right Thread for the Madonna

Compassion and Grace

We walk through the cobbled streets and paths of Ieper and Rosemary asks, “What will you write about Bruges (Brugge)?” It has been two days and no scratching upon a notepad has followed since our wonderful wander with new friend Roel. As we walk I simply say, “There are not enough threads to connect yet”.

There can be no doubt that The Madonna of Bruges was a distinct highlight. I had wanted to see the carved marble figure of the Madonna and child since learning about the statue on an airplane in December 2014. I know this date well as I watched The Monuments Men, released 2014, on the tiny back of a chair screen on my way to London.

The film was not my first introduction to stolen art of the Second World War. Visits to museums, art history books and other resources had informed me, but The Monuments Men film with its Christmas timing and being relevant to my then current search for faith in humanity was timely. So too the film Woman in Gold (2015), and similarly an earlier film with Peter O’Toole as the psychopathic General Tanz in The Night of the Generals (1967). Tanz suffering a mental breakdown in the Room of Martyrs while viewing paintings of Van Gogh. Within Tanz’s being – the duality of his fine art appreciation tangled within his horrid inhumanity.

As we wander the City of Bruges we learn considerably from Roel who has been most gracious in giving his day to our fine adventure. We wander and observe, sit, drink coffee, find ourselves lunch and return to key points of interest. Rosemary is delighted…we are both amused with the 3.2 – 3.3 km (~ 2 miles) beer pipeline of De Halve Maan brewery. Steadily I snap away seemingly always a few feet or more behind.

The day builds to our entry within The Church of Our Lady. We walk slowly, graciously in search not of the Madonna but of other accents, and then, and at the right moment we are upon mother and child. Carved of white Carrara marble by Michelangelo its compassion resounds from within its setting.

There are many people within the church, many pause but I am in need of reflection. More than a pause – I take my time, find time for others, return, view from one side and the other, to the front, to the centre and from various distances. The figure does not have to speak it is perfection to these eyes…a grace upon the earth.

That The Madonna and child has returned not once but twice due to theft astonishes me. I reflect on what the world would have lost if lost to us all. The Madonna of Bruges, once taken by the Nazis 7/8 September 1944; returned by the Monuments Men from an Austrian salt mine in 1945 and previously, in 1794, by Napoleon’s forces, and repatriated in 1815. Still yet, despite this success I cannot help but wonder upon all art works lost to us all and for all time…a deprivation to humankind…more than 30,000 works lost, stolen, destroyed through the processes of hate and want.

So this day as we walk from our Ieper apartment to outside the Menin Gate of missing souls, I continue to think on my few words…where are the threads, and yet it will come in the unlikeliest of places, from a speaker box above our bounty..as I step the right words (the right thread) fall upon my ears…

There’s a blaze of light in every word…It doesn’t matter which you heard…The holy or the broken Hallelujah...*

*Hallelujah. Leonard Cohen, 1984.

Special appreciation to Roel for his time with us and to Rosemary – always by my side.