O crux, ave spes unica (Vexilla Regis) Fernando Sor (1778-1839) PART I

O crux, ave spes unica (Vexilla Regis)
Fernando Sor (1778-1839) PART I
High Bitrate QuickTime Movie:
http://web.me.com/hortense1/Musicksmonument_movies/O_Crux.html
Vexilla Regis (Royal Banners)
Vexilla Regis was written by Venantius Fortunatus (530-609) and is considered one of the greatest hymns of the liturgy. Fortunatus wrote it in honor of the arrival of a large relic of the True Cross which had been sent to Queen Radegunda by the Emperor Justin II and his Empress Sophia. Queen Radegunda had retired to a convent she had built near Poitiers and was seeking out relics for the church there. To help celebrate the arrival of the relic, the Queen asked Fortunatus to write a hymn for the procession of the relic to the church.
The hymn has, thus, a strong connection with the Cross and is fittingly sung at Vespers from Passion Sunday to Holy Thursday and on the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross. The hymn was also formerly sung on Good Friday when the Blessed Sacrament is taken from the repository to the altar.

Art collection Old Catholic Church Amersfoort:
• North of the Netherlands, ca 1600
• Jan van Scorel - Crucifixion??
Jan van Scorel was born in 1495 in Schoorl (Scorel) near Alkmaar. It is not certain where he studied, some scholars think that he was apprenticed to Jacob Cornelisz in Amsterdam, others - to Jan Gossaert in Utrecht. Passion for traveling put Scorel on an extended tour: he visited Dürer in Nuremberg, painted his first representative work in Obervellach in Austria ("Sippenaltar", 1520), then traveled via Venice to Rome. There Pope Adrian VI, a native of Utrecht, appointed him painter to the Vatican and successor to Raphael as Keeper of the Belvedere. From Rome Scorel went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
After his return to the Netherlands he lived in turn in Haarlem, Ghent, at last, in 1524, he settled in Utrecht and developed a brilliant career as a painter and teacher. Highly gifted and educated (he was an architect, engineer, poet, musician, knew several languages), equally endowed with intellect and spontaneity, he created a wealth of altarpieces and portraits in which Italian art merged with native tradition that gives us the right to consider him the leading Netherlandish “Romanist”. (Netherlandish “Romanist” is a term used to denote a large group of leading Flemish artists of the first half of the 16th century, who integrated the classical imagery in their work. From this time on, painting mythological scenes and nudes as the main subject also became popular in the Netherlands.) Many of the artist’s works were destroyed during the Iconoclasm (1566). Jan van Scorel died in Utrecht in 1562.