I did a post at one time about paintings of crimson Cardinals enjoying life,  being humans,  and generally going wild (HERE),  so I thought I'd continue the fun with a post about monks doing the same,  but this time painted by a single artist,  the German,   Eduard von Grützner (technically Polish now, as he was born in Gross Carlowitz, a chunk of what was formerly Prussia).  The guy had style.  He had a huge range of subjects in his art,  but he also did a large number of depictions of monks at various stages of play.  I dig that.

With my typical caveat about negative opinions on religious subjects and figures,  von Grützner goes well beyond people's potential prejudices in this area.  His monks are eminently human,  showing all the joy and foibles which are the hallmark of the human being.  His colours are warm and muted,  his lines are organic and lively,  and there's a spry liveliness to all his figures that just make one feel good.  One thing we know from his work;  monks are fun.  And fat.  And potentially alcoholic!   Even being the 200% tetotaller that I am,  I still find these chaps HIGHLY amusing.

I hope you will enjoy his stuff as much as I do;  he's worth your art-looking time.

No matter how you feel about religion,  no matter how you feel about Catholicism,  pro or con,  there's one thing that you have to admit:  Catholics have style.   It is my hope that the haters will set aside their biases and enjoy.

It may be obvious to say, but I do a lot of harvesting of images on the web; it was the sheer mass in my collection that inspired this blog.  The more I grabbed,  the more that I noticed very cool images of the cardinal in his scarlet robes.  The cardinal,  as viewed in these images,  is a very human chap;  pious, educated,  amused,  amusing,  serious,  fun,  artistic,  musical,  and has a good sense of la bonne vie,  or the good life.  I started putting them in a folder on my drive,  and it grew to a huge size!  Now seems like the right time to share these.  I have at least three times as many of them as presented here,  so I picked some of the most interesting and fun ones;  playing games,  playing music,  eating and interacting with pets.

So here they are, by artists such as Georges Croegaert,  Francois Brunery, Victor Marais-Milton,  Jehan Georges Vibert, Alfred Charles Weber,  Andrea Landini, Ernst Nowak,  and Paoulo Bedini.

(click image to enlarge, then use the arrow keys ← → to change images )