CULTURAL ACTIVITIES
The Department of Cultural Activities invites the university community to open up to a broader and more comprehensive concept of truth, rationality, wisdom, man and reality. It contributes, as an agent of the integral formation of UFV students, to generate playing fields that allow them to dialogue with the other, with the Good, the Truth and the Beauty.
We offer film and literature cycles, visits to the main museums in Madrid, inspiring trips, events and exhibitions on campus, concerts and much more. But cultural experience is a reversible experience, an artistic work emerges as such at the moment it is recreated by a performer or a contemplator. So we need you: will you join us?
Art and prayer
“Solemnidad de Pentecostés en el Panteón” (Solemnity of Pentecost at the Pantheon)
Verónica Berhongaray. Coordinator of the Department of Cultural Activities. Universidad Francisco de Vitoria
My proposal for this time of prayer is not an ordinary work of art. I am not commenting on a panel, a sculpture, the portico of a church. I propose for you -and also for me- to contemplate an artistic act closer to performance. That is, in a sacred space of incalculable historical value such as the Pantheon of Agrippa in Rome. The most influential building in history and that, since its construction in 727 BC, does not cease to amaze those who venture to cross the 16 granite columns that came from Egypt.
“ “Yo soy la vid y vosotros los sarmientos” (I am the vine and you all are the branches)“
Marta Díez Yáñez. art historian. UFV Families
(Jn 15, 1-8)
Sarcophagus “of the three shepherds” – 4th century. Vatican Museums
“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.” (John 15:1-8)
The disciples of Emmaus
Philip Roca Wick.
We could think about the “discussion” of the “wayfarers” prior to their encounter with the risen Christ. Whether it was heated or whether it was simply meaningless because they had little or no understanding of Jesus’ passage through this world. How often our rigidity or our stubbornness, our way of seeing the world, our selfishness or any other tendency, leads us to forget the genuine meaning of our life and our relationships with others?
Noli me tangere
Irene Solis.
In this moment of contemplation at Easter time, we plunge into the depths of the Gospel passage “Noli me tangere”, where Jesus asks Mary Magdalene not to touch him yet, for he has not yet ascended to the Father.
This fresco by Giotto, painted in 1303 for the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, plunges us into the crucial moment when Mary recognizes the risen Jesus, after thinking that he was the gardener. It is in this instant of recognition and love that Jesus, with an apparently cold sentence, stops her impulses. But in its context, this pause reveals a look of profound education and love.
Agnus Dei
Álvaro Buitrón Morales. Master of Humanities, doctoral candidate and professor at the Universidad Francisco de Vitoria.
Next, we will meditate on one of the central themes of the Christian faith: Jesus Christ as the “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29).
The painting that will serve us for the contemplation of the paschal mystery will be the Agnus Dei by Francisco de Zurbarán. However, it will not be the one in the Prado Museum, but the one in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, dated 1939.
The Adoration of the Magi, Pedro Pablo Rubens
Prof. Dr. Francisco Bueno Pimienta. Dept. of Humanities.
With the attitude of humility that should characterize all those who wish to find wisdom, they leave their self-referential intellectual speculations to open themselves to new discoveries, guided by the star, symbol of trust in the God who saves. The Adoration of the Magi, in the context of the Epiphany (that is, of the universal manifestation of God’s saving plan) reveals Christ as the Prince of Peace, capable of reconciling all the peoples of the earth. In this way, the bodily voluptuousness of the characters, in addition to reflecting one of the characteristics of Rubens’ specific pictorial style, becomes a sign of the goodness and tranquility that are always associated with times of peace.
Our Lady of Hope, Feast of the Expectation of Childbirth
Teresa M. López Monje. Art Historian and Director of University Extension at the University Francisco de Vitora.
Focusing more on the birth of the Messiah, this miniature from the Codex of Ferdinand and Sancha, made in the 11th century -which, by the way, is in the National Library of Madrid- shows us clearly, expressively and through bright colors, a central idea: the birth of Christ means the triumph of good over evil. This is the great joy that Christmas brings us: thanks to the birth of the Child, death and sin do not have the last word
The Annunciation by Fra Angelico
Pablo López Raso, Professor of contemporary art. Academic Director of the Fine Arts and Design degrees at the Francisco de Vitoria University.
What does it tell us? Well, it tells us the great epic of the Salvation of man thanks to Christ but with the necessary collaboration of a young adolescent girl who makes an exhibition of vocation, sacrifice and love for God”
Prometheus, can you free me from my chains?
Miriam de Asis Aguado, 3rd Humanities
Does it make sense today to believe in something beyond the human being himself? When you, Prometheus in chains, took the fire away from the gods, you gave us the power of consciousness. At that moment we realized that we can build our world, win over the cold, the beasts, the darkness… You opened our eyes to the power of our hands. You challenged Zeus and proclaimed, “I hate all the gods who, having received benefits from me, treat me unjustly.”
