Editorial August 13, 1990 Issue

Spiritual perspective

Ann Kenrick

We usually think of perspective in connection with works of art. The artists of the Renaissance, for example, used linear perspective to depict objects and scenes. Their paintings appear to the eye to include the same infinitely distant vanishing points the eye sees in everyday life.

In Leonardo da Vinci's famous fresco the "Last Supper," painted between 1495-97, in Sta. Maria delle Grazie, Milan, all the perspective lines in the room lead to the vanishing point at the head of the central figure of Christ Jesus. This powerful perspective draws the eye directly to the center of the picture, and one almost feels one is part of the event.

Artists may not be the only people seeking new and better ways of seeing things, however. We can all do with a viewpoint that helps us to judge things and events in their true relationship one to another. Sometimes daily troubles and worries can seem so overwhelming that it is hard to maintain the larger perspective that helps us look beyond our difficulties and seek solutions for them.

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