Project: Our Lady of Fatima Russian Byzantine Catholic Church, San Francisco, CA
THE COMMISSION:
LITURGICAL WALL PAINTINGS INSPIRED BY EARLY CHRISTIAN ICONOGRAPHY: THE DARK CHURCHES OF CAPPADOCIA, TURKEY
The inspiration for this cycle of paintings is to be found in the earliest Christian iconography, that of the Dark Churches' of the Goreme Valley of Cappadocia, Turkey. Although Cappadocia was already a center of Christianity by the 3rd century, these unusual churches are thought to have been carved and dated between the early and middle 11th centuries. The "Dark" Churches are so named because they are located in both natural and excavated cave formations and thus lack windows.
The earliest inhabitants of the caves were Christian ascetic hermits, seeking to imitate the life of their predecessors in Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. The interiors of the caves proved readily available, requiring no special skill or instrument to carve the volcanic rock. Over time, more elaborate cave churches were developed to serve its growing monastic communities. There are some thirty extant cave churches in the Goreme Valley, and the valley is now an UNESCO world heritage site.
Client: Our Lady of Fatima Russian Byzantine Catholic Church (OLF) is a small parish presently located in San Francisco, California, entrusted to the care of the Archbishop of San Francisco. Named after the miracle of Our Lady's apparition at Fatima, Portugal in which Mary, the Mother of God proclaimed, "Russia will be converted!", this humble parish had its genesis in the 1950's when Jesuit priests at the University of San Francisco began ministering to the spiritual needs of Russian Catholic exiles who had first fled Stalin's Communist takeover.
