FRIDAY FEATURE: Seeking the sacred in . . . electric light?

Detail: electric lights on mosaic Last Supper, 1891/1896

I’m still struck by the upheaval over “going electric” as St. Stephen’s chose that route in 1890 (see last week’s post here). The seismic cultural shift and controversy showed new dimensions of the forces behind the move at the church, the three Magee sisters who nudged the vestry to electrify with their proposal to light the mosaic Last Supper for the altar they’d just commissioned for the church. 

The more I ponder their push to light the monumental mosaic the more intrigued I become. 

Why did the Misses Magee even consider the prospect? 

Their inspiration, an English Arts and Crafts mosaic Last Supper on the High Altar of Westminster Abbey of around 1870, was not lit. The Abbey went electric only later, generally and temporarily for coronations beginning in 1902, before permanent relighting began in 1913. 

Did the Magees see electrically lit art in churches elsewhere? 

Were they prompted by simply living with the new mosaic within St. Stephen’s for five months amidst the buzz over growing uses of electrical lighting?

The project’s timing benefited from the bumps in the earliest experiments in lighting individual works. In 1878, English inventor Lord William Armstrong reportedly highlighted one painting in the art gallery of his mansion Cragside, Northumberland, with an arc lamp like those that first provided general lighting there. Its strange glaring, cold light may have been magical for viewers then but Armstrong quickly shifted (1880) to Joseph Swan’s warmer incandescent system as the technology became available. By 1882, wealthy American collectors/investors in Thomas Edison’s enterprises installed his incandescent lighting in their home galleries. I’m grateful to Chad Shapiro, an authority on historical electrical lighting, for identifying these landmark efforts (”Reflector Shade,” commentary received July 3, 2024).

Edison bulbs, I just discovered, starred in St. Stephen’s inaugural lamps, according to an article published soon after the mosaic’s unveiling: 

The lighting of the picture is by pendants, so called Sanctuary lamps, of ornamental gilt metal, globular in form, hung at a distance from the picture and slightly above it. These lamps, closed towards the body of the church, contain each an Edison electric bulb of one hundred candle power (Philadelphia Saturday Review, November 14,1896, n.p.). 

The illustration above, from a print in St. Stephen’s archives of the view published in the article, is precious; someday we’ll have better scans to study its subtle details. What I believe I see, guided by the 1896 description (my arrows point to the lamps), indeed recall Sanctuary lamps used in Judeo-Christian tabernacles and chancels since early times. Edison’s gilt-metal lamps, “closed” facing the nave, provide ornate reflectors angled to direct light to the mosaic. 

Who designed the system? Edison’s network, including his company that produced lamp components (Bergmann & Co.), or one of the new lighting specialists born in this innovative period? Again, Chad Shapiro noted this professional evolution. 

As to the candlepower, a 120 candlepower (candela) incandescent bulb, say some websites, has the light intensity of a 100-watt incandescent bulb, but there are so many other factors like beam spread. The spacing and proximity to the mosaic of the 3 hanging lamps are critical. I hope for more expert insights here...

The photo doesn’t suggest their effect on the mosaic and we don’t yet know visitors’ reactions to it. 

Art in sacred spaces, moreover, also involves special criteria, as we learn from work on earlier and contemporary sacred spaces. 

At the heart of each project are symbolism and religious experience.

Bernini Ecstasy of St. Teresa, 1652, Cornaro Chapel, Sta Maria della Vittoria, Rome

In its ancient moral battle against darkness (chaos, evil), humankind has sought a relationship with the divine manifest in natural light (theophany) within its sacred spaces. There, builders and communities tightly coordinated site, structure, and often season. As part of a building’s physical and symbolic fabric, its art contributed to its voice and experience. Consider the oculus in the dome of Rome’s Pantheon from which sunlight still moves across effigies of gods around the walls throughout the day during the spring and fall equinoxes. 

Steinhäuser, Burd Children’s Memorial, 1852

Like the Pantheon, Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Teresa draws daylight through an unseen oculus within a niche over the altar. There sunlight illuminates gilt “rays,” adding divine presence to the protagonists that Teresa described in her vision, herself with the angel whose spear pierces her with the painful love of God. 

St. Stephen’s commissioned a comparable, if quieter artistic “apparition” in 1853: a side “chapel” by architect Richard Upjohn with a skylight that washed daylight over Carl Steinhäuser’s white marble group below, inserting the divine within the imminent resurrection of devout young ones. 

Though period photographs don’t capture the eloquent skylight, AZ Shindler’s painting of the church interior of about 1858 in fact emphasizes it, rendering the burgundy-painted chapel’s glowing “supernatural” daylight as visible within the nave. Shindler’s view is invaluable since the skylit “divine” downlight was extinguished when Mason’s Parish House enveloped the chapel in 1888. 

Edison’s electric lights on the mosaic, however, are not “divine” daylight. Is the Misses Magees’ “improved” modern lighting ungodly because it’s not natural, profaning the sacred place with scientific materialism?

I think not. 

Churches have long employed artificial light in churches (oil lamps, candles) to signify divinity in earthly form, like the God-Man Jesus Christ. Such lights also convey the human quest for spiritual enlightenment, for Christians especially through scripture and Jesus’s example. 

At St. Stephen’s we honor that search and bond with Jesus Christ through the defining detail of Tiffany’s 1911 Atmore memorial window: the radiating light from Nicodemus’ lamp that binds him with Jesus. Learn more here.

Could Edison’s 1890 electric lamps, embodying the same scriptural lesson, be the “Nicodemus lamps” for our search for illumination and Jesus Christ? Such lamps thus complement the divine streaming in as sunlight through the stained-glass windows. 

Yet the windows come to life only in daylight. The mosaic could be lit by Edison’s electric lamps night and day. 

In illuminating the life size mosaic independent of daylight, Edison’s 1890 incandescent lamps further drew us into the world of the represented Last Supper, the God-Man’s pivotal meal with apostles bequeathed to us as the Eucharist, a joining in thanks. 

Because this setting disappeared with Tiffany’s redecoration in 1917, we can only imagine the effect of the lamplit mosaic—especially when celebrating the Eucharist, heightened with human-made light that merged us all, human and divine, in thanks. 

— Suzanne Glover Lindsay, St. Stephen’s historian and curator