The Theater: The Bearers of Gifts

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For Beauty includes three conditions: wholeness . . . harmony . . . and radiance.

—St. Thomas Aquinas

As the year declines towards its end, man, as far back as history records, has always hungered for imagery, the warm glow of fire, a reassuring star of hope. In the Christian world, the great theme around which this yearning centers is the story of the Nativity. No subject in Western art has had more enduring appeal for the hearts and minds of men. From the West's earliest known painting of the Madonna and Child (TIME, May 16) through the passionate, attenuated figures of...

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