Saint Benedict and his twin sister, Saint Scholastica
Bonaventure Ostendarp, O.S.B., American, 1856–1912, Ss. Benedict & Scholastica, 1875, oil on canvas, each 40¾ x 14¾ inches, Saint Vincent Archabbey Collection.
Created by Father Bonaventure Ostendarp, O.S.B, the year he pronounced his vows as a Benedictine monk at Saint Vincent, this pair of paintings depicting Saint Benedict and his twin sister, Saint Scholastica, were installed in Archabbot Douglas's office for decades. Following his ordination to the priesthood in 1880, Father Bonaventure began his studies at the Royal Academy of Art in Munich at the behest of Abbot Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B. While in Germany, Father Bonaventure became aware of the artistic innovations being developed by the Benedictines at Beuron Archabbey. The ‘Beuroense Style’ rendered Christian narratives according to geometric principles in a stylized hybrid that sourced elements from Byzantine, Egyptian, and Greek traditions. Father Bonaventure incorporated this modern fusion with the didactic compositions favored by Germany’s early-nineteenth century neo-medievalists, the Nazarenes.
Upon his return to Saint Vincent in 1885, Father Bonaventure briefly taught art courses at the College before transferring his vows to Saint Mary's Abbey in Newark, New Jersey. From there, Father Bonaventure was sent to teach at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire in 1893, where he founded the Studio for Christian Art. Having grown up in Cincinnati, he would have been well acquainted with the work of Brother Cosmas Wolf, O.S.B., and the artists of the Catholic Altar Building Stock Company located in nearby Covington, Kentucky. The Studio’s founding in 1893 was loosely modeled on Brother Cosmas’s workshop, executing ecclesiastical commissions focusing on monumental murals and decorative painting for nearly fifty years.
Archabbot Douglas’s abbatial motto “Heart speaks to heart” strikes at the core of what art offers us. He understood that art possesses the power to traverse the great distance from one human heart to another by sharing what is most true of our shared humanity. Throughout Archabbot Douglas’s three-decade tenure, the arts have remained an essential element of America’s first Benedictine community. Through his unwavering support, art and architecture on campus articulate the personal as well as communal expressions of identity and purpose of Saint Vincent.
