Orazio Gentileschi, The Lute Player, c. 1612/1620
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund
http://www.nga.gov/image/a00006/a0000609.jpg

One of my favorite meditations in the book is about this painting. Sister Wendy writes “It might seem rather paradoxical to take a musician as an image of silence, but what I have always found so beautiful about Gentileschi’s Lute Player is her attitude of listening… Music is a kind of prayer, a very real one, just as are poetry and art. Go further: if we truly seek God, everything is prayer to us.”