Sister Wendy Beckett is one of the best-known art historians in the world today. Here, she explores her reactions to a painting that she finds uniquely compelling: the haunting Christ on a Cross by El Greco. As she candidly admits, "I have always had trouble in talking about religious art." This surprising admission leads her to examine the very nature of religious and spiritual art, which, Sister Wendy argues, are not at all the same thing.
In the course of her discussion she takes a careful look at fourteen works by artists ranging from anonymous medieval masters to Paul Cezanne, in...