Book Description
Holy cards offer comfort, consolation, and encouragement to Catholics, who often carry these portable images of their favorite saints with them and use them in daily religious ritual. Given as remembrances at wakes and funerals, communions and confirmations, holy cards are also a widely popular-and highly collectible-form of folk art. This handsome volume, the only book available on the subject, is both a rich illustrated survey of this devotional art and a gallery of saints organized thematically along with brief biographies, attributes, and powers. Prophets and angels, disciples and evangelists, martyrs and hermits, visionaries and mystics are among the religious figures in Catholicism represented here-in exquisite turn-of-the-century depictions that are at times dramatic or disturbing, at times moving or comforting. Barbara Calamari and Sandra Di Pasqua, who also collaborated on Novena and Holy Places, explain the often enigmatic symbolism in these cards in a beautiful book that makes an ideal gift for first communion, confirmation, or graduation.
About the Author
Barbara Calamari is a freelance writer who has worked in both film and television. Sandra Di Pasqua is a graphic designer and art director. Both authors live in New York City.
Holy Cards FROM THE PUBLISHER
From the Birth of Christianity, saints have inspired the classic works of Western art. They are human representatives of divine grace, and their stories of faith and suffering, trials and transcendence have fascinated the secular and comforted, consoled, and encouraged believers. One of the most important and endearing traditions of Catholic iconography is the holy card. Offering images of the saints, these portable objects of daily ritual are carried for protection, given as remembrances at communions, confirmations, and funerals, and collected and traded. In Holy Cards, authors Barbara Calamari and Sandra DiPasqua offer the first book to survey this rich and varied art form. Featuring both a pantheon of major religious figures in Catholicism and many little-known saints -- such as St. Clare, patron saint of television, and St. Monica, patron saint of disappointing children -- this book is sure to inform and inspire. Beautifully reproduced, the holy cards are arranged thematically and each is accompanied by a brief biography of the subject, including attributes and powers. A glowing compendium of jewel-like images, Holy Cards can be treasured for both its spiritual and artistic qualities. Indeed, it is the perfect gift for all those interested in Catholicism and devotional art.
Art & Photography
Book Info
