Painting the Paschal Candle
The thought of painting the Paschal Candle for the Rosary Shrine in London, where I currenly am based, first came to me at the beginning of the year. I wanted to have a candle with the Rosary Shrine coat-of-arms, and I thought at first that I should commission a professional painter to do it; looking at the designs in the religious goods catalogues only convinced me that only a custom-designed candle would satisfy me. However, I knew a few friends who had painted their own, and I enjoyed the idea of coming up with my own design. The only problem was that I hadnât picked up a brush to paint anything since I left secondary school, almost three decades ago! So, I ordered two Paschal candles so that if I made a mistake with one, I had an alternative candle with a ready made design!
A little research online, and a few discussions with Facebook friends ascertained that I needed acrylic paints including gold and silver acrylic paints and some wax pens. To these, I would need to add an acrylic paint binder which helps the water-based acrylic paint to bond with the wax surface of the candle. And finally I needed to trace a pattern onto the candle. For this I bought carbon paper and an embossing tool.Â
Design: Cosmati and the Cosmos
From the outset, I knew I wanted a candle with designs inspired by the artwork of the great Christian basilicas of Rome. I gave some consideration to a design inspired by the Lindisfarne Gospels, but thought this was too complex and ambitious. At another point, I thought of an icon of Christ emerging from the tomb and trampling the coronavirus underfoot! But I thought that it unwise for a beginner like me to try any figural work lest my depiction of the Lord become like the âMonkey Christâ of Borja! So, I returned to the medieval designs that have long inspired me: Cosmatesque patterns.Â
Named after the Cosmati family, Cosmatesque patterns are sometimes called âopus alexandrinumâ, perhaps because they originated in Alexandria. The geometric designs are certainly of Greek and Byzantine origins, and theyâre first seen in the Western Church in the 11th century. According to Leo of Ostia, the abbot of Monte Cassino (the influential abbey founded St Benedict)Â âsent envoys to Constantinople to hire men who were experts in the art of laying mosaics and pavementsâ, and thus the transfer of knowledge about these Eastern patterns and designs came to the West. Cosmati work flourished in the 12th and 13th-centuries predominantly in Rome, but examples of Cosmatesque work are found throughout Italy, and even in Westminster Abbey in London. Its âGreat Pavementâ was installed in 1268 on the sacred site where the monarch is crowned. Indeed, Cosmati work is costly, precious, and thus restricted to the most important of churches, often those associated with royalty or the papacy.Â
The stones used for laying the mosaic designs are almost always recycled from classical Roman sources, and two precious stones, coloured green and purple, feature in their design. Green porphyry was called Lapis Lacedaemonius by the Romans, and it came from quarries near Sparta in the Greek Peloponnese and was quarried from the Bronze Age until around the 5th century AD. The even rarer purple âImperial Porphyryâ, which was reserved to the Roman and Byzantine Emperors, comes from quarries at Mons Porphyrites in the Gebel Dokhan of Egyptâs Eastern Desert, quarried from the 1st century AD until the 5th century. Hence, by the time the Cormati family were active in Italy, green and purple porphyry were antiques that were no longer being quarried. The Cosmati pavements, therefore, accentuate and set off roundels of this legendary stone recycled from Roman spolia.
Cosmati designs generally have two geometric patterns: interlaced circular bands called guilloche, and which are said to represent the Resurrection, perhaps because they form a series of infinity loops; and secondly, the quincunx, which is a central circle surrounded by four circles. The quincunx is an ancient symbol, reminiscent of the Greek cross, which stands for the cosmos or an ordered universe. The Cosmatesque quincunx, moreover, with its triangular mosaics inlaid into the whirling circular pattern stands for the created world. As Galileo wrote: âThe book of nature is written in the language of mathematics, and its letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures.â  Hence, at Westminster Abbey, the Great Pavement uniquely had an inscription around the central quincunx design that referred to it as representing âthe eternal pattern of the universeâ.Â
At the centre of the Paschal candle, therefore, I placed a Cosmatesque quincunx, with triangles of green and purple around roundels of green and purple, evocative of imperial porphyry. I looked online for a design that could be easily traced, and printed this out, put the carbon paper on the candle, and then traced over this design with the embossing tool.Â
At first, I had intended to draw a cross in the central circle, and then, on the other four circles, I wanted to draw the âAlphaâ and âOmegaâ, and the year in Arabic numerals: â20âČ - â20âČ. However, it was only after I had painted the quincunx that I recalled that the five incense grains would have to pierce these five circles, thus obscuring these symbols. So, an alternative solution had to be found! Incidentally, the five incense grains stand for the wounds of Christ, or the nails that pierced his body. I bought these golden pine-cones of wax from Italy, where theyâre commonly used to pierce the Paschal candle â rather different from the brass pins weâre accustomed to in England, but they seem to work very well with this candle, and they add to the Romanitas of the design.Â
It was fitting, then, that this quincunx at the centre of the Paschal candle stand for the Cross of Christ, and for his Five Wounds â an observation made by James Joyce concerning the quincunx symbol. However, the quincunx is a rich symbol: as weâve seen it also stands for the whole created order, which is now redeemed and transformed by the Risen Christ; or it stands for Christ in majesty surrounded by his four evangelists; or for the four Platonic elements of creation (fire, water, earth, and air) with the fifth element in the centre being aether, the Aristotelian quintessence. This design, therefore, signifies that all of creation is raised up and renewed by Christ rising from the dead; the whole cosmos is subjected to the imperial Christ, and resounds with the joy of his Gospel. Â
 Our Ladyâs Rosary and the Paschal Lamb
Having decided on the central cross-shaped quincunx, I knew I needed two more roundels that I wanted to add to lenghten the overall design. At the bottom would go the emblem of the Rosary Shrine, which is the monogram of the Blessed Virgin Mary surrounded by the Rosary.Â
I needed another emblem that would balance this at the top, and I chose the Lamb of God, a symbol of the Risen Lord. As St Paul says:Â âChrist, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for usâ (1 Cor 5:7), and this text is used in the Communion chant of Easter Sunday.Â
I searched for a medieval design of the Paschal lamb, and found this beautiful example on the âCruz de Bagergueâ that dates from 1200. The Paschal lamb carries a flag featuring a red-cross on a white field, which is traditionally used as  an emblem of the Resurrection, but it also conveniently looks like the flag of St George, i.e., the flag of England, which is the land now rededicated as Our Ladyâs Dowry!Â
However, what about the requisite signs on a Paschal candle? we needed a cross, and an Alpha, an Omega, and the numerals for this current calendar year. First, I painted a Greek cross in the central circle of the quincunx, using the alternating black and white Cross of the Dominican Order. But I fashioned it as a Greek cross, and around this I wrote the Greek letters IC XC NIKA. This emblem, called the Greek Christogram, has been in use since the 8th century, and it was found throughout Byzantium, notably on imperial coinage. It is a reference to the victory of Constantine at the Milvian Bridge in 312, and the Greek letters spell out:Â âJesus Christ Conquersâ i.e. through his Cross. By the 9th-century this emblem was believed to be apotropaic, that is to say, it is believed to have the power to drive away evil.Â
Continuing to be inspired by Byzantine art, I looked to examples of Crosses which had an Alpha and an Omega, the Greek letters for the Beginning and the End (cf Rev 22:13) hanging from them. The Altar Cross in Westminster Cathedral notably has these letters of the Greek alphabet hanging from its arms, and I researched and found medieval engravings and medallions with the same device. However, in all the old Byzantine images, the Omega was drawn not with the uppercase Ω but rather the lowercase Ï. So, on the Paschal candle, I drew two jewelled Greek letters, the uppercase A and the lowercase Ï suspended from the Cross-shaped quincunx. Following on from this, it seemed best to put the date above these, but rather than to write the date in Arabic numerals (2020), I opted to stay with the Roman-Byzantine theme, and so I chose the neat Roman numerals (MMXX), inscriped above the horizontal roundels of the quincunx.
Finally, I decided to add a few small elements to the candle so that not everything was centred around the middle portion of the candle. Near the top, I painted some bees, and then I added some to the bottom as well. Why bees? This is again a classical reference: Virgil, too, praised the industry and society of bees, and the Exsultet, which dates to at least the 4th century, says this concerning the Paschal candle:Â
âOn this, your night of grace, O holy Father,
accept this candle, a solemn offering,
the work of bees and of your servantsâ hands,
an evening sacrifice of praise, this gift from your most holy Church.
But now we know the praises of this pillar,
which glowing fire ignites for Godâs honour,
a fire into many flames divided,
yet never dimmed by sharing of its light,
for it is fed by melting wax,
drawn out by mother bees to build a torch so precious.â
Where there are bees, there ought to be flowers, so I added a few pink flowers, a reference to the cherry blossom (sakura æĄ) which appear at this time, and which the Japanese enjoying viewing in the Spring (called hanami è±èŠ), as a meditation on transience and impermanence, and the fleetingness of beauty. The exercise of painting the candle, I realised, is an exercise in detachment and impermanence because I would also come to sit in church, watching the candle burn down over the course of the year, and so consume and destroy that which I had painted. Sic transit gloria mundi!Â
Finally, I added a skep, the medieval bell-shaped hive made from coiled straw developed by apiculturists, and the hive is dripping with golden honey. It seemed fitting that the bees should have a place to live, and that their hive should be of the kind commonplace in Europe during the time that the Cosmati family engaged in their particular golden industry.Â
And then, as a little personal indulgence, I added a portrait of my beloved priory cat Felix. First consulting a book of âCats in Medieval Manuscriptsâ, I adapted an illustration from the âLuttrell Psalterâ, c.1325-35, and gave the cat the same colouring and pattern as Felix, who has a fine coat that looks like a Dominican habit. Felix has quite a penchant for sweet things â even though heâs not allowed them â and I am sure heâd love some honey, towards which heâs shown extending his paw.Â
I wanted to avoid seeing brush stokes in the quincunx, so I learnt to dab my brush rather than just paint it in broad strokes. I realised that I didnât need a lot of paint - often a pea-sized blob would suffice, with an equal sized blob of the acrylic binder: mix these well, and then, let it dry a little; the less wet the paint, the easier it was to paint on the wax. I learnt that, with acrylics, if one made a mistake, one could easily run over it with a wet brush, and the water washed away the paint like an eraser. As time went on, I rather enjoyed painting the candle, and it took me about 2 hours a day for 5 days, which is far quicker than I had expected.Â
As Providence would have it, I began work on the Paschal candle on the Monday of Passiontide. By that time, public Masses had ceased because of the coronavirus pandemic, and then, having more time on my hands, this project became a Godsend because it gave me something to focus on; it took my mind off the worries of the present moment. Painting the candle became an act of love, something beautiful and devotional that I could do for God and for the sacred Liturgy; it became a prayer, and indeed, I would pray as I painted the Rosary, or the Paschal Lamb. Finally, on Easter night, I pierced the quincunx with the wax pine-cones of encased incense, and then I saw it lit and raised high on the Paschal candle stand. And then, I was privileged to be the first to incense the candle, and then, to sing the Exsultet that praised God for it, asking that itsÂ
âflame be found still burning
by the Morning Star:
the one Morning Star who never sets,
Christ your Son,
who, coming back from death's domain,
has shed his peaceful light on humanity,
and lives and reigns for ever and ever.â
