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Brescia University art gallery displays Ursuline Madonnas

To honor the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph in their 150th anniversary year of serving in Daviess County, Brescia University’s Anna Eaton Stout Art Gallery is displaying the replicas of the Madonna that once hung in the original Mount Saint Joseph Academy.

Mother Aloysius Willett, the first mother superior at Maple Mount, secured the Madonna replica paintings each year during her leadership. The paintings were displayed in a parlor in the Mount Saint Joseph Academy building where guests were welcomed. After the Academy closed and was converted into the Mount Saint Joseph Conference and Retreat Center, the room was rechristened as the Madonna Room and the paintings were displayed. Since the retreat center was deconstructed in 2023, the paintings have been in storage at Maple Mount.

The Anna Stout Art Gallery is in the C.E. Field Center for Professional Studies, the newest building on the Brescia campus at Ninth and Frederica streets. The Ursuline Sisters opened Brescia College in 1950, and Sisters have served there ever since. There are also other pictures of Maple Mount hanging on the first and second floors of the Field Center.

The Anna Eaton Stout Art Gallery hosts a variety of exhibits throughout the year, including a number of student art shows.
The gallery is currently completely devoted to the Madonna collection.
The south wall of the gallery.
Sistine Madonna, left, and Madonna of the Chair, both replicas of work by Raphael.
Immaculate Conception, left, by Bartolome Esteban Murillo, and Madonna of the Grande Duke, by Raphael.
Madonna and Child in White, by Nathaniel Sichel.
The Madonna at left is unnamed, but the Mater Dolorosa is by Martin Feuerstein.
Madonna of the Veil, by Carlo Dolci.
The piece of stained glass outside the art gallery honors Ursuline Sister Mary Diane Taylor, whose photo rests beside it. Sister Mary Diane served as an art professor at Brescia for 51 years. The Bartholomy-Taylor Administration Building is named in her honor.
This three-panel photo of the original Mount Saint Joseph Academy, opened in 1874, hangs outside the art gallery.
This photo of the Mount Saint Joseph Conference and Retreat Center hangs on the second floor of the Field Center.
This photo of the Our Lady of Prompt Succor shrine at Maple Mount hangs on the second floor of the Field Center. The shrine, a smaller replica of one in New Orleans, was dedicated at the Mount in 1927.
This photo of the Mount Saint Joseph Motherhouse Chapel is on the second floor of the Field Center. The original Chapel opened in 1929, with renovations in 1964 and 1992.
This stained glass window of Saint Ursula and her companions greets visitors to the Field Center. The window originally graced the Motherhouse of the Ursuline Sisters of Paola, Kansas, who merged with the Ursulines of Mount Saint Joseph in 2008. Jim Barr, a 1976 Brescia graduate, crafted the frame around the window using a walnut tree harvested from the Mount.

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