LATROBE, PA – The Verostko Center for the Arts at Saint Vincent College will co-host a free public lecture titled “Medieval Revivals and the Climate of Devotion” at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 12, inside the Verostko Center, located within the Dale P. Latimer Library on the College’s campus. Presenting the lecture is Dr. Virginia Chieffo Raguin, professor emerita of humanities at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.
The lecture and subsequent question-and-answer session are expected to run for approximately one hour. There will be seating set up in one of the galleries with a large screen and a podium. A reception with light refreshments will follow from 8-9 p.m.
In addition to the Verostko Center, the event is co-hosted by the School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Departments of History and Visual Arts and Media Design.
Raguin will explore how revival styles shaped architecture and stained glass in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She will highlight the work of the Pitassi Stained Glass Studio of Pittsburgh and its connections to European and American traditions. The Center’s current exhibition, “Pitassi Stained Glass Studio Design Collection at Saint Vincent College: A Labor in Light and Lead,” is on view through July 17.
The Pitassi Stained Glass Studio of Pittsburgh was founded by the Italian immigrant Angelo Leopardo Pitassi and continued by his daughter, Louise. They produced Gothic revival windows for 34 years between 1926 and 1960.
In addition to the current exhibition, the campus is home to Saint Vincent Archabbey Basilica, built between 1891 and 1905, inspired not by French Gothic but by the art of the Rhineland—12th-century Romanesque for the architecture and 16th-century Renaissance for the windows. Raguin will demonstrate the relationship between existing windows in museums and in churches in Europe and the United States to explain this phenomenon.
By bringing together original design drawings, historic architecture and global examples of ecclesiastical glazing, the lecture invites audiences to consider stained glass not only as decoration but as a powerful intersection of faith, artistry and cultural exchange. The current exhibition itself represents the first public presentation of this collection at Saint Vincent College, made possible through the preservation of more than 600 studio drawings donated in 2021.
Raguin has published a number of books on religion, stained glass and architecture, including “Stained Glass in Thirteenth-Century Burgundy” (1982), “Stained Glass: From its Origins to the Present” (2003) and “The Illuminated Window: Stories Across Time” (2023).
As a member of the Corpus Vitrearum International, Raguin’s contributions include two volumes: she co-authored “Stained Glass before 1700 in the Midwest United States” (2002) and wrote “Stained Glass before 1700 in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum” (2024). She has also produced exhibition catalogue essays on contemporary artists.
Raguin’s online book, “Style, Status, and Religion: America’s Pictorial Windows 1840-1950,” presents a broad overview of the American experience and offers 450 downloadable images.
Visitors are encouraged to stop at the Welcome Booth for a temporary parking pass, directions and a map and are usually asked to park in Parking Lot E and walk northwest alongside Wimmer and Placid Halls to the Verostko Center, located inside the Latimer Library.
Interested attendees with questions are encouraged to contact Amy Roadman, who serves as the Verostko Center’s public outreach and programming coordinator, at 724-805-2310 or amy.roadman@stvincent.edu.
More details can be found on the Verostko Center’s website.
