Gallery of Images from SJU Art Collection
Illustrated in SJU Press Books

 

Original works of art are central to the teaching and publishing mission of any university. Saint Joseph's strives to assemble, by gift and purchase, a teaching collection of important and representative works in selected areas: Colonial Andean painting; Colonial Mexican painting; 19th century Mexican painting and objects; 19th and early 20th century Mexican retablos; 19th and early 20th century stained glass; religious engravings from the 17th to the 19th centuries; Greco Roman, Gothic and High Renaissance casts; Philadelphia regional arts of the 1950s and 1960s; and growing collections of African art and Jesuitica.

The primary purpose of these collections is to inform, to stimulate, and to awaken in students an appreciation for art and culture, as well as an understanding of the power that beauty and art have to elevate the human spirit. As a Catholic and Jesuit university, the established collection niches afford a particularly rich opportunity for students to explore the influence of the Church and the Society of Jesus on the arts of a number of different cultures of the world. SJU Press has drawn from the University's art collection in support of its publishing program in early modern Catholicism and the visual arts.

Selected works from the SJU art collection are illustrated and examined in the following SJU Press books:

Joseph of Nazareth Through the Centuries (2011)
The Jesuits and the Arts: 1540-1773 (2005)
Stained Glass in Catholic Philadelphia (2003)
The Holy Family As Prototype of the Civilization of Love: Images from the Viceregal Americas (1996)
Mexican Devotional Retablos from The Peters Collection (1994)

This section is currently under construction. You may currently view images from Mexican Devotional Retablos from The Peters Collection on the Art Gallery page.