Recently, I was privileged to attend an art exhibit, at which a local—and exceedingly talented—artist, Anthony Visco, exhibited his oil paintings of the Mysteries of the Rosary.
There were a bunch of people at this event, so while I looked at the pieces, I had to strain to keep myself from crying in front of all of them. Mr. Visco has such an amazing talent, he can just capture emotion—love, adoration, joy, pain—so well. As I looked at these, I felt like I could fall into them, like in Mary Poppins, and be there, right alongside Jesus and Mary and the Apostles as the lived the events that make up the Mysteries of the Rosary.
We met Mr. Visco—ok, I have to interject here. I think a lot of people call him Tony. But you know those people who are so brilliant, or accomplished, or talented, that just being near them makes you feel about five years old, and so you have to call them by their proper name, and would never dare call them by their first name, let alone a nickname? Yeah, that’s Mr. Visco. Anyway, we met him years ago—wow, it was a while ago—when we were first shooting one of our episodes for the show on the National Shrine of St. Rita of Cascia. He does a lot of the art in the lower shrine there, and some in the upper church, and we were blessed to be able to attend the blessing of one of his statues, and interview him for the show.
This man is the kind of man who you look at, and clearly see how God is using him. Everything Mr. Visco does blows your mind. And not only is he talented beyond measure, but he is humble and nice as can be. Just the kind of person God would pick, I suppose.
Anyway. The purpose of this post is to introduce you to this man’s work. I’m sure many of you know of him—he worked on the amazing and relatively new Shrine to Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in Wisconsin, which is where these images have been recreated in tiles, as part of a Rosary Walk at the Shrine in WI.
So, here is my photo album of the bit of Mr. Visco’s work which I have encountered. I hope to encounter much more.