The Secrets of Sacred Art

Artists Kathryn Laffrey and Alix Murray get into the art Catholics have made and prayed with for 2,000 years: icons and Byzantine mosaics, illuminated manuscripts, Renaissance and Baroque painting, stained glass, and the sacred art being made right now. Each episode takes a single work or tradition and explains the symbolism, the history, and the theology behind it. Why is there gold behind a saint’s head? What’s actually happening in an altarpiece? If you’ve ever stood in a cathedral and wished someone could tell you what you were looking at, that’s this show.