Artist, craftsman and maestro

ON Saturday October 29 one of Europe's great church artists, the 78 year old Pietro Annigoni, died i' Florence, Alberic Stacpoole OSB writes.
Pietro Annigoni's artistic career began at 15 in Florence, when he started his studies at the academy. His love of religious art developed young, his first full fresco being completed when he was in his late twenties.
His fame as a maestro rests on his portraiture: but his true gift took him on to become a church artist. He is indeed the first such artist in half a millennium to be called upon to adorn Florence's medieval and Rennaissance churches. When the rebuilt monastery of Montecassino required formal decoration, it was to him that the monks and connoisseurs turned for the filling of numerous spandrels and for the great west end panorama of the apotheosis of St Benedict among monks and nuns of time immemorial — Paul VI being depicted at bottom centre because in 1964 he had declared Benedict "Patron of Europe".
And when, in his last working months, the confessional chapel of Padua's Basilica of St Anthony needed decorating, it was naturally to Annigoni that the friars turned for a striking fresco of the prodigal son. In fact it was his seventh fresco in that convent for the Franciscans during the last eight years including a Last Supper in their refectory and a deeply melancholy Christ on the Cross. Annigoni's perseverence as a craftsman in his seventh decade, his profound spiritual conviction and his Giottesque gifts all show him to have been more than a maestro.
Kathleen Baxter, President of the Naitional Council of Women in the mid-sixties and of the National Board of Catholic Women from 1974-77, died last week aged 87.
Educated at St Joseph's College in her home town of Bradford, Mrs Baxter worked for a time as an Inspector of Taxes. Later she was called to the Bar. As President of the National Board of Catholic Women Mrs Baxter urged the Government to listen to women's views with reference to joining the EEC. She was Chair of NCW's Status for Women Committee which submitted important points for the incorporation of the 1975 Sex Equality Act.
Mrs Baxter's service on the National Board of Catholic Women made her responsible in part for memoranda and submissions on women's issues to the Government and the Law Commission. She was a founder member of the Legislation Committee set up by the Bishops' Conference, served on the original Laity Commission.
Mgr Jeremiah Curtin, former Rector of the Beda College, Rome, became a Doctor of Divinity and taught at St John's Seminary, Wonersh until 1948. He was then parish priest as Eastbourne and Haywards Heath before being appointed Rector of the Beda College. He was for a long time ecclesiastical advisor for The Universe.