The Christ of the Bric-a-Brac

The Christ of the Bric-a-Brac (from the series: Inanimate Subjects)

I was tempted to classify this image under “Ars Longa Vita Brevis”, but that’s not the spirit of how the image was captured. I stopped by a bric-a-brac shop in Austin and this bronze of Christ Arisen, complete with stigmata, was perched majestically above a crowd of other bronzes that were of a more mundane character.

Alongside is a bronze of Mary - but which Mary? Is it the mother of Christ or is it the Magdalene? I suppose the two statues are unrelated, being to different scales and having different origins. But a part of me yearned for it to be the Magdalene, for it was she who first saw the risen Christ - and she is thus the more appropriate Mary to this context - even in a bric-a-brac shop.