For Pentecost Sunday in this Marian month, I'm featuring artworks of the Virgin Mary and the Disciples at the descent of the Holy Spirit by two 20th century French artists in the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection. We see her depicted as the central figure amid Christ's followers at Pentecost in her role as Mother of the Church, a title first given Mary in the writings of the 4th century saint, Ambrose of Milan. A windswept curtain dramatically billows out to enfold the Virgin Mary in her brilliant blue veil in a gouache painting from Charles Plessard, a follower of the master of French contemporary sacred art, Maurice Denis, who made the color study in the 1930s for what appears to have been a cycle of instructional posters for Roman Catholic catechism classes. The second richly toned, chiaroscuro print of Mary at Pentecost is the work of the relatively unknown graphic artist, J. Frederic Loisel, from a 1949 suite of 12 lithographs devoted to the life of the Virgin Mary, (John Kohan)