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New volume in the Frick Diptych series pairs a text by award-winning author Marilynne Robinson with an absorbing essay by Ian Wardropper, director emeritus of The Frick Collection.
This book examines The Triumph of the Eucharist and the Catholic Faith (1561−62), an exquisite enamelled group portrait by Leonard Limosin (ca. 1505–ca. 1575). The plaque represents living and deceased members of the Guise family in an allegory of the Catholic Faith. From the first generation, Claude, Duke of Lorraine, and his brother Jean, Cardinal de Lorraine, both deceased in 1550, stroll at center. François, 2nd Duke of Guise (and like his father famed for battles against heretics), pushes the chariot wheel over the bodies of Protestants. His brother Charles, identified by his emblem of an ivy-covered obelisk with the motto te stante virebo (With you standing, I shall flourish), holds a text that may refer to his address at the Colloque de Poissy, in which he proposed moderation in the current religious conflict. Seated in the chariot is the family matriarch, Antoinette de Bourbon, holding a chalice and host, symbols of transubstantiation—the miracle by which the bread and wine of the Eucharist become the actual body and blood of Christ—a central tenet of Catholicism.
Marilynne Robinson (b. 1943) is a novelist and essayist. Across her writing career, Robinson has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, National Humanities Medal in 2012, and the 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. In 2016, Robinson was named in Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people. Robinson is best known for her novels Housekeeping (1980) and Gilead (2004).
Ian Wardropper retired as the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Director, The Frick Collection in 2025.