Two Paintings of St. Zita and the Miracle of the Flowers

      Lately, I’ve been thinking about getting a portrait of Saint Zita for my home. In the Catholic Church, St. Zita is the patroness of housekeeping and domestic servants. She is a lesser-known saint. As far as I can tell, statues of her are very rare in the U.S. However, I have found a couple websites that sell pictures of her. There are two Renaissance paintings of her I have come across in my search, and I want to talk about these two paintings. Both of them depict the same scene, but their depictions are quite contrasting. I have my clear favorite.

     St. Zita lived from 1212 to 1272 A.D. She was a servant of a wealthy Italian merchant, Guglielmo Fatinelli, from the time she was 12 years old.⁽¹⁾  She remained with the Fatinelli family until her death at age 60. She evidently had a devout prayer life, was dutiful at her job, and when she was not looking after the affairs of the Fatinelli family, she devoted her time to caring for the poor in the local city of Lucca, Italy. At first, the Fatinelli family disapproved of her almsgiving and did not entirely trust her with their family resources, but as time went on they not only came to accept her charitable works, they openly supported her and came to trust in her so much that they put her in charge of all the family's domestic affairs, including their personal finances. 

     The two paintings I found depict the miracle of the flowers, attributed to St. Zita. (There is a nearly identical story attributed to Elizabeth of Hungary, but let’s set that aside for now.) As the story is told, Zita would often take bread from the Fatinelli kitchen and sneak out to feed the poor. She clearly did not have permission to do this at the time. One day, some other servants saw her carrying out bread in her apron, and they alerted Signor Fatinelli, who immediately went to stop her. When Signor Fatinelli confronted Zita and forced her to reveal what was in her apron, the bread had miraculously turned into flowers.

     So here are the two paintings I came across depicting this miracle. The first (and, might I add, far superior) of these paintings is by Bernardo Strozzi (1581 – 1644).

"The Miracle of Saint Zita" by Bernardo Strozzi, circa 1615-20

     The second (and quite inferior) painting is by Valerio Castello (1624 – 1659).

"A Miracle of Saint Zita" by Valerio Castello, circa 1653-54

    In comparing these two paintings, I want to contrast two features that Strozzi’s painting gets right and where I think Castello’s painting falls short. Those two features are humanism and modernism. I hope to define each of these terms and show how these two paintings convey very different messages even while depicting the same miracle. I want to then conclude with some reflections on religious art and why I personally am attracted to Strozzi’s painting of St. Zita.

Humanism

     Stated simply, humanism is the emphasis on the human experience. Strozzi’s painting goes into detail to show how human Zita is, down to one of my favorite details in the painting, her red nose. Zita is portrayed as tired and worn down. She’s not enwrapped in religious ecstasy. She’s trying to care for the poor with her last remaining energy after a day of domestic service. She has no supernatural divine strength that makes her miraculously energetic. She is working with human energy, and she confronts this miracle with human energy.

     Zita aspires to do good work for the poor. Her aim and intention are not focused on creating miracles. Her aim is to practice what in Catholicism is referred to as the corporal works of mercy: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, etc. If we keep this in mind, we might see how this miracle is a moment of failure, not victory. This aspect of the miracle shines through in Strozzi's depiction. Zita was bringing bread to the poor, and while the miracle saved her from punishment by her employer, the loss of the bread meant just that much more hunger for the poor in the street. Zita is not happy with this miracle. Her face isn’t radiant. She's not glorifying God. She can't glorify God because by disclosing the miracle she would be disclosing her theft of the bread. Indeed, she shows a kind of disappointed resignation covered over by exhaustion. This fact, this fundamental failure to carry through with Christ's work for the poor, is evident in Strozzi's depiction, but it would be completely lost in a crowd of angels and cherubs. Indeed, it is lost in the angels and cherubs of Castello’s painting.

     Sometimes people take the spirituality of a miracle as an opportunity to turn saints into angels, which is what Castello’s painting does. If you look at Zita’s posture in Castello’s painting, you see that her body is positioned as though it were unnaturally weightless, with her arms outstretched in demonstration of her flowers, and her neck careened as though she has no need to keep her balance. Her body floats as lightly as the cherubs above her. She’s been transformed into a weightless being. There is little of the human side to her actions left. Her glorification here conceals the fundamental fact that Zita did not want a miracle. Castello's painting misses the fact that if St. Zita did want a miracle, it would surely be to multiply the loaves, not to turn them into flowers.

     In Castello's painting, a mother figure with a plump round baby is kneeling down in admiration of this miracle. The child's plumpness suggests that there is no hunger to feed, as though giving bread to the poor was never really necessary to begin with. It was merely the setup for a miracle. The faded figures on the left, as far as I can tell, are the servants who ratted Zita out but now stand amazed by God's glory. The message of the painting is this: there is no hunger to feed, only glory to give to God. "Soli Deo gloria!" 

     Personally, I hate this attitude towards miracles, i.e. the attitude that puts the glory of the miracle above all else. It is everything that the Epistle of James warns against, as well as Paul in chapter 13 of First Corinthians.⁽²⁾ Setting aside Biblical exegesis for the footnotes, I hate this attitude because it always glosses over the saint's human actions and responses to the world. In such paintings as Castello's, saints are always portrayed in the same awful and stereotypical ecstasy that is artificially painted onto them like a kind of medieval emoji. There are no spiritual lessons to learn from this. Unless we have an example of a saint responding to God in a moment of resignation, I'm afraid those of us who are perpetually resigned are damned. 

     We don't need examples of saints responding to miracles in ecstasy. We need examples of saints responding to miracles with complete indifference because they were never in it for the miracles to begin with. We need saints who believed in doing the right thing because it was right, not because they got to go on a spiritual joyride. We need exhausted saints, tired saints, sick saints, irritable saints, grumpy saints, sad saints - in other words, human saints. What we really need are saints who feel every bit as human as us, and yet do the right thing anyway. What we need is Zita, the exhausted housemaid with the sniffles, bringing bread to the poor, who accepts God's miracles but never asks for them. 

     I love the humanity Strozzi has given to Zita. She's a real person in his painting. When I look to this Zita, I actually have an idea of what actions I need to emulate and what attitudes I need to cultivate. Human beings require human role models, even for divine illumination. 

Modernism

     By the term “modernism” I mean something close to the original meaning of the term “modernity” as defined by the French intellectual Charles Baudelaire. Baudelaire defined modernity as the artist’s attempt to capture the beauty of his subject in contemporary terms without anachronistically dressing up his subject in the literal and figurative garb of the past. Modernity is the temporal element to art that ties it to the present; it is “the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable.”⁽³⁾

     Modernity is not the rejection of eternal truth, nor a rejection of the past. Indeed, Baudelaire believes each historical period has its own “modernity.” That is, each period in time presents the eternal as it is displayed in that present moment. In contrast to modernity, what Baudelaire rejects is the attempt of those who “for the necessary and inevitable costume of the age . . . substitute another.” He says such art is “guilty of a mistranslation only to be excused in the case of a masquerade.”

     One of the great dangers in religious art is that, taking its subject matter to be eternal, it can attempt to represent the eternal by dressing it up in some sort of heavenly wardrobe. The result is not a depiction of eternal truth but an anachronistic chimera. This is exactly what Castello’s painting does. The clothing in Castello’s painting is not really clothing at all but an artistic study in drapery. It is so academic in its search for eternal form that it loses all semblance of realism. In Castello's painting, St. Zita’s attire has no practical value except to convey a certain degree of Biblical modesty displayed by a generic Biblical woman. The whole scene belongs not to the peak of the Middle Ages, when Zita actually lived, but in some lost Biblical tale. And being in some lost tale, it really loses its eternal aspect altogether, precisely because Zita herself, the living breathing person who embodies this eternal character in her saintly aspect, has been robbed of any personality, and a generic impersonal caricature of a saint has been painted in her place.

     Castello's cherubs also add to this temporal displacement. Cherubs are, after all, the embodiment of temporal dislocation. They are angels who are older than the cosmos and yet too young to display any personality. Cherubs are a failed attempt at representing agelessness. I am thoroughly convinced that many great pieces of art would be made much greater if the cherubs were erased. 

     Strozzi’s painting, on the other hand, clasps onto the contingent elements of the scene, and so the scene actually conveys the eternal aspects a million times better. Zita is a servant in a rich household of the High Middle Ages. Her clothing is detailed with intricate but threadbare knitting, a hand-me-down from rich to poor, master to servant. Both the wealth and servitude of her situation are displayed. Her hair is tied in a kerchief, not to display some kind of sexual modesty (which seems to be the focus of Castello's dreadful drapery), but to display the modesty of her rank, a type of modesty often forgotten by Christians but central to the story of who Zita is. By focusing on the temporal details of her servitude, Strozzi emphasizes Zita’s saintliness. 

     Another feature I love about Strozzi's painting is Signor Fatinelli's glasses. The High Middle Ages saw huge advancements in the field of optics, and reading glasses were invented right around the time Zita was living.⁽⁴⁾ Signor Fatinelli is shown looking over the flowers as though all he really wanted was something he could examine up close with his new lenses, which were themselves a novelty of the time. The miracle God worked in that moment was specific to Signor Fatinelli, who was too distracted by his own ability to see flowers up close that he appears to forget why he is there in the first place. In this way, the miracle is displayed as a miracle of concealment and protection, not a miracle of glorification. This is more true to the actual story of the miracle. God wrought a miracle to save Zita.

     To reiterate, Castello tried to paint an eternal saintliness without the necessary contingencies of where, when, and how. He paints a Zita who was not a servant in the High Middle Ages, which is to say, he has painted a Zita who has done none of those things that made Zita a saint. Strozzi, by painting Zita in her proper time and place, has managed to depict what an actual saint looks like. In the process, the true nature of the miracle as an act of divine protection, not an act of glorification, is much more clearly displayed. It is through the temporal depiction of the saint that the eternal truth of the picture shines through. 

     Here I have compared two images of a saint. The example that Baudelaire gives is of a slightly less dignified subject, but it rings equally true: “If a painstaking, scrupulous, but feebly imaginative artist has to paint a courtesan of today and takes his ‘inspiration’ from a courtesan of Titian or Raphael, it is only too likely that he will produce a work which is false, ambiguous and obscure. From the study of a masterpiece of that time and type he will learn nothing of the bearing, the glance, the smile or the living ‘style’ of one of those creatures [of today].” As of courtesans, so also of saints. The ambiguity of which Baudelaire speaks is precisely what I see in Castello’s painting. Strozzi, on the other hand, really does capture the bearing, glance, and living style of a saint. 

Reflections on Religious Art

     I have been using academic frameworks to analyze these two paintings, but I will take a moment to step away from this academic approach to discuss these insights more in terms of my gut feelings. 

     Religious art is susceptible to portraying the saints, and even Christ himself, as glossy and plastic. Always enraptured in prayer, experiencing some kind of divine ecstasy, or suffering a stereotypical martyr’s death – these plastic saints display their saintliness at the cost of becoming unbearably fake. They display all the qualities of a photoshopped Instagram model. Photoshop is where you go to smooth over the wrinkles in a model’s skin. Religious art is where you go to smooth over the wrinkles of a saint’s personality and soul. In so much religious art, the saints’ prayer is too perfect to be real. Their bliss is too perfect to be real. Their passion is too perfect to be real.  

     Castello’s art belongs in that fake and plastic category of religious art that I find unbearable. There is nothing inspirational about seeing a saint who is all saint and no humanity. When every saint is portrayed with perfect devotion, I am not inspired to be devout. When every miracle is portrayed as though it were of Biblical revelation, I'm not inspired to believe. When every religious experience is portrayed as a moment of ecstasy, I am not inspired to hope. The whole display of religious devotion is unbearably fake, like the hypocrites who pray on the street corner that Jesus warned us against.⁽⁵⁾ Personally, I hate it.

     Such religious art conceals the real virtue of the saints and makes us feel guilty for not being able to attain the fake virtue it has put in its place. Fake and unobtainable standards of virtue are every bit as damaging to our spiritual lives as fake and unobtainable standards of beauty are damaging to our health. 

Conclusion

     I love Strozzi’s painting of St. Zita, because Strozzi gives us an idea of how Zita became a saint. It wasn’t through profound experiences, or perfect prayers, or her ability to glorify God at every second of the day. She became a saint by being a working woman, by the sweat on her kerchief, by executing her duties diligently, and by caring for the poor. And when this miracle happens, Zita meets the miracle with exhaustion. She’s tired. And yet, God worked this miracle neither to glorify Himself nor to glorify a saint. Indeed, he did it to conceal Zita's good works, both sparing her from her employer’s wrath and saving her from vainglory in having to defend her actions of stealing the bread. 

     When I first started looking for a depiction of St. Zita, I had not planned to write an essay in art criticism; but once I was faced with two dramatically different depictions of her, I had to sort out in my head just why I was attracted to the one so much more than the other. Having done that, I am myself somewhat surprised by how many religious insights came out of this little essay, especially since I used the largely secular insights of humanism and modernism to construct my analysis.

     But is that really a surprise that secular frameworks yield religious insights? I would say that is no more surprising than finding out that being a good housemaid is what makes one a patron saint. That is, after all, why I want a picture of St. Zita in my home to begin with. I need a reminder to clean the dishes and sweep the floor, and these actions have religious meaning. 

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Footnotes:

(1) I cannot seem to locate any good sources regarding Signor Fatinelli's first name, Guglielmo. Every source I have found contains a copy-and-paste replica of a very awkwardly worded sentence, the origin of which I cannot seem to find. Still, this is the only name I have found. Throughout this essay, I'll refer to him as Signor Fatinelli

(2) It is interesting that both James and Paul use the metaphor of a mirror. For Paul, a Christian faith that looks for miracles - focused on "prophecies [that] will pass away" and "tongues [that] will cease" - but does not center on love is like a man looking at a dim reflection in a mirror. (1 Corinthians 13:8-13) James says that those who hear but do not practice God's word are like men who look into a mirror and then immediately forget what they look like once they look away. James follows this up to remind people that "religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction." (See James 1:22-26) This analogy of a mirror suggests to me that those focused on miracles over good works are obsessed more with themselves than with God. 

(3) All quotes from Charles Baudelaire are from his essay "The Painter of Modern Life" (1863) as reproduced in the anthology "From Modernism to Postmodernism" (1996) ed. Lawrence Cahoone. 

(4) For time reference, Roger Bacon described the concept of reading glasses in 1268 in his Opus Majus. 

(5) Matthew 6:5