A question of Calvinism

A few Saturdays ago I joined a drawing class at the National Gallery run by the amazingly talented Gayna Pelham. Not only can she draw, paint, teach others to do it, and make us do things we never thought we could do, but she also went round the twenty or so members in the group, asked us to say our names, and then repeated them a couple of times, and after that she never forgot who we were, whether in a group or individually out in the Gallery.

I have always liked the idea of being able to draw but I could never do it in a satisfactory manner. She showed me that I could. I shall never be a great artist but I can now do a drawing that doesn't make me squirm with embarrassment. I bought a sketch books, pencils, graphite, rubber, etc. Now what to draw? Gayna said that we should do something every day. I liked the look of the little sketch of Nicholas Copernicus on the front of the book Copernicus and His World that I am just finishing. He appears as the classic mid-16th century scholar wearing a lovely doctor's bonnet. I had a look for others like it and found Calvin and Luther and Erasmus (he provides my Lent reading) and then borrowed a book of Holbein's pictures from the Barbican Library.

My first little drawing in my grandly-named Reformation Studies 2009 series was John Calvin, after a student's sketch of him teaching in old age. It was a rather childish sketch - mine that is - and immediately took me back to the criticism that I scribbled rather than coloured in properly. Alright, I know that it is sad that I have never forgotten being criticised when I was eight years old, but it undermined my confidence in myself as an artist. Really! The next day I tried Luther and I'm glad to say that (in my opinion) the Wittenberg Police would have recognised him from my sketch. I did have trouble with his nose - round, chubby - but I also had trouble with Erasmus's nose, which is straight and long and like an isosceles triangle. (I was using a Holbein picture of, I think, 1523.)

One of the things I find now is that I have a very clear visual image of each of these three. And when the Parish Office 'phone rang and a lady asked me if there were any Calvinist churches in the City - "Certainly not", I replied in horror - I could see in my mind's eye old Calvin with his long divided beard. The conversation went something like this:

Did any City clergy teach Calvinism?

Not that I know of, because we are all Anglicans and our theology isn't Calvinist. Some clergy might tend more towards Calvin as others did towards catholicism.

What did Calvin teach, exactly?

I really don't have time to explain, try using Google! Goodbye!

If you go to Wikipedia you will actually find a long and useful entry on John Calvin. You will also find some very nice pictures. It won't surprise those of you who know me that I would rather draw a picture of John Calvin than study his theology.