I don’t remember seeing this before, arms of the Catholic Diocese of Orange. Very pretty, and very nicely painted.
http://www.oc-breeze.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Diocese-of-Orange-coat-of-arms.png
Ooh, this is very nice. I really like the design and, you’re right, it is beautifully painted. Thanks for posting.
Ditto; but what is/how would one blazon the charge in chief?
Michael F. McCartney;101896 wrote:
Ditto; but what is/how would one blazon the charge in chief?
How about "a rose Gules irradiated in the form of a lozenge fesswise Or?" Or, "... surrounded by a glory of rays forming a lozenge fesswise…"
Or (tongue in cheek) "on a lozenge fesswise gyronny of 36 Or and Azure…"
(There may also be some obscure term for a sideways lozenge, for all I know.)
Here’s the official blazon:
https://www.rcbo.org/images/stories/Orange_Diocesan_Arms_blazon.pdf
The portion about the rose states:
"a Rose GULES (known properly as the Rose of Our Lady of Guadalupe) slipped VERT seeded, fimbriated, and irradiated OR"
It’s surely a beautiful painting, but I find the design overly complex.
As a hypothetical, perhaps instead (the blazon might need some work):
Or issuant from a base Azure charged with a rose Gules irradiated Or an orange tree Vert fructed Tenne and a chief double enarched Azure.
This keeps the allusions to the ocean, the orange tree, the Saddleback Valley, and the rose, but decreases the tinctures by two and makes the design a bit less complex.
David Pope;101899 wrote:
Or issuant from a base Azure charged with a rose Gules irradiated Or an orange tree Vert fructed Tenne and a chief double enarched Azure.
This keeps the allusions to the ocean, the orange tree, the Saddleback Valley, and the rose, but decreases the tinctures by two and makes the design a bit less complex.
Rather than "an orange tree Vert fructed Tenne," couldn’t you just say "an orange tree Proper"?
arriano;101902 wrote:
Rather than "an orange tree Vert fructed Tenne," couldn’t you just say "an orange tree Proper"?
Sure. In my mind, though, the distinction is whether you want the trunk and limbs of the tree to be brown, or whether you want the tree part to be all green with orange oranges… 
"fructed proper" there, a compromise.
David’s suggestion is interesting & simplifying the colors is generally desirable. On the other hand, IMO it would shift the visual focus (the rose on a lozenge gyronny of 36 - & I suspect the theological focus as well (Our Lady…) - to the bottom & leaves the chief somewhat bare.
But as always, de gustibus & all that. Either way, nice design.
Here is what it replaced. The diocesan arms were redesigned by James Noonan at the time the current bishop, Kevin Vann, was installed resulting in the image in the first post of this thread. While I think the redesign is a definite improvement redesigning the arms of a See is not always desirable if what had been used previously was already in long use. In this case the diocese has existed only since 1976.
http://www.catholicmen.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/logo_lg.gif
The new version is sooo much better than the old one.
Amen!!
david;101974 wrote:
The new version is sooo much better than the old one.
Agreed—and how often does that happen?
