Use this Art Guide video in Step 3: Contemplation of Columban 
A resource to help you pray using the images and Art Guide of the 2023 Columban Art Calendar.
The Virgin and St John Travel to Ephesus, 1862 (oil on canvas) Germán Hernández Amores (1823–1894) Restored Traditions Prado Museum, Spain.
The story of the Virgin travelling with St John in a boat to Ephesus after the death of Christ is not found in the Bible, but it is related in later religious literature, especially The Golden Legend. This medieval text locates both Mary and St John, the beloved of Jesus, in the great Roman city of Ephesus in western Anatolia.
The house of Mary in Ephesus, and the place of her Dormition, continues to be a sacred site of pilgrimage today. According to The Golden Legend, John was exiled to Patmos under the persecution of Emperor Domitian, where he wrote the book of Revelations. Upon the death of the emperor, John proceeded to Ephesus. Hernández Amores was associated with the German Nazarene artists of the nineteenth century. The Nazarenes aimed to return to the spirit and content of medieval European art with its religious idealism, believing that all art should serve a moral purpose. Amores represents the Virgin Mary and St John with the idealised faces of youth and beauty, yet their sombre expressions of introverted thought and prayerful trust allude to the time after the death of Jesus. The journey to Ephesus, far away from the Holy Land and the places of Jesus’s passion, has the sailboat crossing turbulent seas; when the helmsman falls asleep, two angels of God guide the boat to its destination and safety.
