Through the colourful banners at the top, the renewed Ultimate Stabat Mater website has got a new look. The banners are fragments of paintings by Ton Verstraten, a Dutch painter and sculptor. On April 6th in 2012, I took pictures of these paintings during the exhibition Passion in Oirschot. I was struck by the colours and the subject: sheet music from two famous Stabat Maters, by Verdi and Pergolesi.
Finding appropriate photos for the banner of the site was complicated in the design phase of the new website. We considered a photo of the 12th station (Mary at the foot of the cross) but that did not work out. The same applied to Mary in close-up.
Partly because of the subject, the sheet music of two famous Stabat Maters, the photos from 2012 were a perfect choice for our purpose! We managed to track down the painter, Ton Verstraten, and asked him for his permission. He lives and works in Boxtel (the Netherlands) and has created sculptures and paintings on the subject of Stabat Mater for many years. We are very grateful to Ton for giving us permission to use fragments of the paintings for the Ultimate Stabat Mater website. Please read more about him on his website.
This statue, a grieving woman, is a work of art by Sandra Hurley, daughter of Hans van der Velden (the initiator of the website). It was a present for her father years ago; it has been the site’s graphic symbol for a long time. We are pleased that the designer was able to integrate the sculpture into the look of the site.
