Art works in mysterious ways.
A Nashville painter gave Visitation Monastery’s nuns a glimpse at where they came from during an art exhibit at Visitation Academy on May 13. The painter displayed a dozen paintings she made of nuns in the 400-year-old Visitation Monastery in Annecy, France — the very order from which Bay Ridge’s sisters draw inspiration. Seeing the holy women react to her paintings was priceless, the artist said.
“It was the neatest thing is to see their reactions,” said painter Anne Goetze. “They have such a tight little community within themselves, but then you see where they originated from, and they’re connected to it.”
The Brooklyn devotees look to the French order for inspiration, their leader said.
“It is the founding monastery of the order,” said mother superior Susan Marie Kasprzak. “We call it our holy source — we revere it and look towards it for guidance.”
For many of the 13 sisters in the Bay Ridge convent, the exhibition was their first glimpse — and likely only — of the seminal sorority, Kasprzak said.
“As far as I know, only three of us have been there,” she said. “It was so profound for the others to get a sense of Annecy and to see the sisters who they probably never met or will never meet.”
