Icons & Imagery

Nativity

2011-12-25T14:14:00.000-08:00

Title: Nativity
Artist: Gentile da Fabriano
Medium: Tempera on panel
Size: 72 x 42.6 cm
Date: c. 1420-1422
Location: John Paul Getty Museum, Malibu.

“In these books of the prophets we found Jesus our Christ foretold as coming, born of a virgin, growing up to man's estate, and healing every disease and every sickness, and raising the dead, and being hated, and unrecognized, and crucified, and dying, and rising again, and ascending into heaven, and being, and being called, the Son of God.” Justin Martyr, First Apology Chapter XXX, c. 150 AD.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

2011-09-17T19:07:00.000-07:00

Recently I was lucky enough to take a pilgrimage, of sorts, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. As many an art lover knows, the Met must surely be counted among the great museums of the world. Their permanent collection contains many great works of Western art by some of the most renowned painters of all time: Picasso, Van Gogh, Dali, Monet, El Greco, and countless others. As my personal interest leans toward paintings of a religious nature, I was spellbound by some of the works I was able to see first hand. My photography skills, lacking at the best of times, was doubly challenged by the requirement that no flash photography is allowed in the museum, but I did mange to cobble together a few good shots that I have complied here for all to enjoy.

Title: Massacre of the Innocents
Artist: Francois-Joseph Navez
Navez was a student of Jacques-Louis David in Paris. Navez’s style fuses David’s naturalism and idealization of Ingres, whom he also admired. Exhibited to great acclaim in the Brussels Salon of 1824, this work presents the Massacre of the Innocents as an intimate family drama, whose frightening realism struck critics. The delicate brush work, and the sense of depth were both striking to see in person. The swollen, tear stained eyes of the mother, as well as those of the muffled baby, made the work even more touching.

Title: The Dead Christ with Angels
Artist: Edouard Manet

This was the first of several paints by Manet with a religious theme. After the painting was already on its way to the 1864 Salon, Manet realized he had depicted Christ’s wound on the wrong side. He was advised to correct this “mistake” before the painting was exhibited so not “to give the malicious something to laugh at”. He chose not to, and although there was some ridicule, French writer Emile Zola gave the work the respect it deserved, noting that Manet’s intention was to emphasize the reality of the corpse, while calling attention to its holiness by including a halo. This painting, very large at (approximately) 6’ x 5’, was breathtaking to see in person. The stark portrayal of the body of Christ captivating the eye, as though the angels are propping Him up for all to see what has been done. Gorgeous.

Title: Joan of Arc
Artist: Jules Bastien-Lepage

With the loss of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), the national heroine from Lorraine, Joan of Arc, acquired new symbolic importance among the French. At the 1880 Salon, Bastien-Lepage, himself a native of Lorraine, exhibited this painting, which represents the moment of Joan of Arc's divine revelation in her parents' garden. His depiction of the saints whose voices she heard elicited a mixed reaction from Salon critics, many of whom found the presence of the saints at odds with the naturalism of the artist's style. But, in fact, it is this juxtaposition that makes the painting so compelling. From across the gallery even before the ghostly saints could be discerned, the look in Joan’s eyes was noticeable. I even remarked “What’s with that girl’s eyes?” as I strolled over to take a closer look.

Titles: The Adoration of the Shepherds & The Vision of Saint John
Artist: El Greco

One of my favorite artists, El Greco, was nicely represented in the European Painting section. His stylistic idiosyncrasy and the deep religious devotion demonstrated in his paintings has, as I have grown older, made his work a joy to behold. Despite its unfinished and mutilated state (is a large fragment of one of three altarpieces El Greco was commissioned to paint in 1608 for the church of the Hospital of Saint John the Baptist), The Vision of Saint John remains enormously powerful. Its visionary treatment of space and dematerialization of form have been shown to have played a crucial role in the genesis of Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon

Title: The Crucifixion with the Virgin and Saint John
Artist: Hendrick ter Brugghen

The strikingly archaic qualities of this picture, such as the angular figure of Christ, the shallow space, and the starry sky, have reminded many viewers of late-Medieval woodcuts, prints by Dürer, and Grünewald's Isenheim altarpiece. I was immediately struck by the color scheme the artist chose, with it’s greenish-browns and dripping blood, highlighting the macabre scene at the crucifixion. An arresting work that ter Brugghen, a protestant, evidentially painted for a Catholic "hidden church" in the Nerherlands.

Title: Madonna and Child
Artist: Carlo Crivelli

This modest-size, devotional painting of the Madonna and Child is one of the Crivelli’s most exquisite works. Exceptionally well preserved, it is usually dated to the 1470s. A willful contrast has been set up between the hyper-refined features of the Madonna—as precious and brittle as an eighteenth-century porcelain figurine—and the over-sized, naturalistic rendered fruit, which casts emphatic shadows onto the moired silk hanging, shown as though fastened to the frame by red laces. The haloes are embellished with jewels that are depicted as though they were actual objects applied to the flat, gilt surface. I was not familiar with Crivelli before my trip to the Met, and was just one of several wonderful discoveries there.

Title: Saint Julian
Artist: Taddeo Gaddi
Saint Julian, a nobleman of the ninth century, is shown holding his attribute, the sword with which he accidentally slew his parents. This well-preserved picture, which dates from the 1340s, is a cut-down lateral panel from an altarpiece. Taddeo Gaddi was a pupil of Giotto's and one of his most inventive followers, working alongside the master for many years.

Title: The Annunciation
Artist: Philipe de Champaigne

This picture was painted in 1644 for the private chapel, or oratory, of Anne of Austria, the widowed wife of Louis XIII. At first glance, I was inclined to dismiss the work as too stiff and too formal, but I soon became mesmerized by the details. From the grinning cherubs to the delicate toes of the angel, this work was full of small touches that made the painting a pleasurable viewing experience.

Unfortunately, I only had a few hours to tour the museum, with obligations elsewhere that took precedence over my trip to the Met. I will certainly endeavor to return one day (God willing) to look over some of the great works I had to give short shrift or miss altogether. With admission by donation, the entry fee is no obstacle to viewing some of the greatest artwork ever created. I would highly recommend a visit to this institution as it holds some real treasures, some irreplaceable works of art that enrich the soul and the human experience.

The Assumption of the Virgin

2011-08-15T08:18:00.000-07:00

Title: The Assumption of the Virgin
Artist: Ambrogio Bergognone
Medium: Oil and gold on wood
Size: 242.3 x 108 cm
Date: c. 1510
Location: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The Assumption of Mary is a belief held by many Christians that the Virgin Mary, at the end of her life, was physically taken up into heaven. The earliest known narrative is the so-called Liber Requiei Mariae (The Book of Mary's Repose), a narrative which survives intact only in an Ethiopic translation. Probably composed by the 4th century, this early Christian apocryphal narrative may be as early as the 3rd century. The Roman Catholic Church teaches as dogma that Mary, "having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory." Pope John Paul II quoted John 14:3 as a scriptural basis for understanding the dogma. In this verse, Jesus tells his disciples at the Last Supper, “When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am." According to Catholic theology, Mary is the pledge of the fulfillment of Christ's promise.

This picture, which dates from the early sixteenth century, was likely Bergognone's first treatment of this subject, and was the center panel of a large polyptych. Its delicacy is typical of his work, and there is the influence of Leonardo's facial types. The metal stars on the Virgin's mantle and the gold spandrels are later additions while the gilding on the lettering on the haloes is almost entirely gone.

Ambrogio Borgognone, variously known as Ambrogio da Fossano, Ambrogio di Stefano da Fossano, Ambrogio Stefani da Fossano or as il Bergognone (c. 1470s – 1523/1524), was an Italian Renaissance painter of the Milanese school. While he was nearly contemporary with Leonardo da Vinci, he painted in a style more akin to the pre-Renaissance, Lombard art of Vincenzo Foppa and Bernardino Zenale. The dates of his birth and death are unknown. His fame is principally associated with his work at the Certosa di Pavia complex, composed of the church and convent of the Carthusians.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 19 - Temptation of Christ

2011-08-06T09:34:00.000-07:00

Title: Temptation of Christ
Artist: Ilya Repin
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: tbd
Date: 1896
Location: tbd

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 19

Matthew 4:8-10 Again the devil takes him to a very high mountain, and shows him all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory, and says to him “All these things will I give thee if, falling down, thou wilt do me homage.” Then says Jesus to him, “Get thee away, Satan, for it is written, Thou shalt do homage to the Lord thy God, and him alone shalt thou serve.”

Traditional academics have argued that great religious painting ends with Tiepolo (1696 – 1770), that subsequent painters produced charming works, but did nothing new. But as we have seen, the nineteenth century was a period of creative searching and upheaval for European artists, notably among the French. Traditionalists, like Ingres, tried to stem the tide of new styles, but by the time of his death in 1867, a new generation of creative talent, such as Manet and Cezanne, had forged the way ahead. The Symbolist movement, a continuation of the Romantic tradition of artists like Blake and Turner, anticipated the psychology of Freud and Jung. With notable artists such as Bocklin and Redon, their use of mythological and dream imagery created a visual language of the soul, and made extensive use of Christian imagery. More a philosophical approach than an actual style of art, they were a major influence on some Expressionists. Like most Europeans of the nineteenth century, all these artists were raised in a Christian culture, with early life organized around the central rituals of the church. This does not mean, necessarily, that they were pious, conservative church-goers, but only that such a milieu allowed their creative spirits inspiration to create some masterpieces of Christian art.

Ilya Yefimovich Repin (August 1844 – September, 1930) was a leading Russian painter and sculptor of the Peredvizhniki artistic school. His realistic works often expressed great psychological depth and exposed the tensions within the existing social order. During his maturity, Repin painted many of his most celebrated compatriots, including the novelist Leo Tolstoy. Additionally, Repin devoted much time to painting religious subjects, though his treatment of these was usually innovative and not traditional. Shortly after 1900 Repin moved to Kuokkala, Finland, located about an hour's train ride from St. Petersburg. Later, as the artist did not accept the Revolution of 1917, he did not want to go back to Russia, even though in 1926 a delegation sent by the Ministry of Education of the Soviet Union helped him financially and tried to entice him to return. To acknowledge and commemorate Repin's artistic achievement, in 1948 Kuokkala was renamed Repino.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 18 -The Calvary

2011-08-05T06:27:00.000-07:00

Title: The Calvary
Artist: Odilon Redon
Medium: Pastel on cardboard
Size: 69 x 53 cm
Date: c. 1895
Location: Foundation E. G. Bührle Collection, Zurich.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 18

Mark 15:25 And it was the third hour, and they crucified him.

Around the middle of the 1890s a religious mysticism takes the place of the dark visions of Redon’s work. Charcoal gives way to the bright pastel, and Christ figures prominently in his work. In "The Calvary" this new Redon, tense with religious hopes, tense also in the sense that he is subject to restrictive compulsions: the overemphasized "sacral" central axis of the Cross with the small crucified figure on the upper margin of the picture and the rigid, lamenting Mary in her red robe. It is to she whom the viewers eye is drawn, and we are forced to contemplate her plight, under Redon’s shimmering sky.

Bertrand-Jean Redon, better known as Odilon Redon (April 1840 – July 1916) was a French symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman and pastellist. The young Bertrand-Jean Redon acquired the nickname "Odilon" from his mother, Odile. Redon started drawing as a child, and at the age of ten he was awarded a drawing prize at school. Aged fifteen, he began the formal study of drawing, but on the insistence of his father he changed to architecture. His failure to pass the entrance exams at Paris’ École des Beaux-Arts ended any plans for a career as an architect. In the 1890s, pastel and oils became his favored media, and he produced no more noirs after 1900.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 17 - Mary Magdalene in the house of Simon the Pharisee

2011-08-04T06:20:00.000-07:00

Title: Mary Magdalene in the house of Simon the Pharisee
Artist: Jean Beraud
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 101.2 x 131.5 cm
Date: 1891
Location: Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 17

Luke 7:36-47 When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.” Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you. Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.” Jesus said, “You have judged correctly.” Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

This interesting and technically accomplished painting pulls the event recorded in Luke into the artist’s contemporary world. Only the figure of Jesus is timeless. All the others, including the startled maid at far right, are in modern dress. The painting was controversial when it first appeared, because people rightly suspected that Beraud was trying to make them uncomfortable by confronting them with their own failings, their own hypocrisy. Many of the well-heeled men in the painting would have had mistresses. Now they were confronted with reality, with raw human suffering, and they did not particularly like it. Interestingly, each person in this work is evidently illustrated with features of a personality from of the world of political or the arts. Christ is illustrated with the features of the socialist journalist Albert Duke-Quercy and Simon the Pharisee those of the writer Ernest Renan.

Jean Beraud (January 1849 – October 1935) was a French painter and commercial artist noted for his paintings of Parisian life during the Belle Époque. He was born in St. Petersburg, son of a French sculptor. Studied law in Paris, then turned to painting after the Franco-Prussian War and studied for two years at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Bonnat. While his Impressionist contemporaries were moving out into the country to study the changing effects of the landscape during the late nineteenth century, Beraud remained rooted in Paris, studying the city life and its people. By the 1890s Beraud had interestingly decided to pursue religious themes, although at one point they had become the antithesis of progressive artistic dictum. As noted by Art critic Gabriel P. Weisberg “...by the end of the century there were so many religious compositions – and painters – that the world of art was flooded with religious sentimentality.”

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 16 - The Miracle of the Gaderene Swine

2011-08-03T06:15:00.000-07:00

Title: The Miracle of the Gaderene Swine
Artist: Briton Riviere
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 107.9 x 160.7 cm
Date: 1883
Location: Tate Gallery, London.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 16

Mark 5:1-20 They went across the lake to the region of the Gaderene. When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an impure spirit came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name don’t torture me!” For Jesus had said to him, “Come out of this man, you impure spirit!” Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area. A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. The demons begged Jesus, “Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.” He gave them permission, and the impure spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned. Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened. When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. Those who had seen it told the people what had happened to the demon-possessed man—and told about the pigs as well. Then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region. As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. Jesus did not let him, but said, “Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed.

Jesus' request for the name of the demon brings the response Legion, a reference to a unit made up of thousands of soldiers. No doubt the name indicates the extent of the possession and the difficulty of Jesus' task in dealing with it. But the demons feared Jesus, feared being sent away, so they asked to be allowed to inhabit the swine on a nearby hill. The choice of pigs is interesting, given their association with uncleanliness in the Old Testament (Lev 11:7). It is not clear why the demons made such a request, other than to escape judgment. The demons' request is granted, but their relief is short-lived. The pigs apparently are startled and rush headlong over a cliff and into the sea. In Judaism the sea was a symbol of potential evil, so this becomes an illustration of evil's destructiveness. When the people travel out to the scene of the miracle, they see a transformed man sitting at Jesus' feet dressed and in his right mind. The people's reaction is instructive; for some people it is very difficult to let God and his power get close to them. These people recognized that Jesus had power, and it aroused fear in them, and they chose to have nothing to do with it. Jesus possesses authority so great that he can reverse the effects of evil. Some are transformed by that power--turned from a path of uncleanliness, destruction and death to life and testimony. But others fear it and want God's presence to be distant from them. They fear what involvement with God's power might entail.

Briton Riviere (1840-1920) was an Irish artist born in London, England. The son of an artistic father, he gave early promise of distinction in the realm of art. At the age of eighteen he exhibited three works at the Royal Academy, and by 1863 that he became a regular contributor to the Academy exhibitions. In that year he was represented by "The Eve of the Spanish Armada", and in 1864 by a "Romeo and Juliet". Subjects of this kind did not, however, attract him long, for in 1865 he began, with a picture of a "Sleeping Deer-hound", a series of paintings of animal-subjects which later occupied him almost exclusively. Even in this branch of art he has successfully introduced the religious element, as may be seen in The Miracle of the Gaderene Swine and his popular painting of Daniel in the lion’s den, Daniel's Answer to the King, housed in the Walker Art Gallery.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 15 - The Raising of the Daughter of Jairus

2011-08-02T06:16:00.000-07:00

Title: The Raising of the Daughter of Jairus
Artist: Gabriel Max
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 71.9 x 87.9 cm
Date: 1881
Location: The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 15

Luke 8:51-56 When he arrived at the house of Jairus, he did not let anyone go in with him except Peter, John and James, and the child’s father and mother. Meanwhile, all the people were wailing and mourning for her. “Stop wailing,” Jesus said. “She is not dead but asleep.” They laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. But he took her by the hand and said, “My child, get up!” Her spirit returned, and at once she stood up. Then Jesus told them to give her something to eat. Her parents were astonished, but he ordered them not to tell anyone what had happened.

The model for Christ has been identified as Joseph Mair, who played the role of the Lord in the famous Oberammergau Passion Play, and the artist’s first wife, Emma Kitzinger, is thought to have posed for the daughter of Jairus. Although favoring the dark tones of his teacher Karl Theodor von Piloty, Max shows his own tendency to add light, delicate tones where applicable. Here, the daughter of Jairus glows with a renewed life, as though the power of Jesus has flowed from his darkened figure, and poured into her. Her expression appears almost bewildered as she rises up from her resting place.

Gabriel Cornelius Ritter von Max (August 1840 – November 1915) was born in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied between 1855 and 1858 at the Prague Academy of Arts with Eduard von Engerth. From 1863 to 1867 he studied at the Munich Academy with Karl Theodor von Piloty, and also Hans Makart and Franz Defregger. His first critical success was in 1867 with the painting "Martyr at the Cross": that painting transformed the dark palette of Piloty into a religious-mystical symbolism using a psychological rendering of its subject. He continued to use the dark palette of the Piloty school well into the 1870s, later moving toward a more muted palette, using fewer, clearer colors.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 14 - Sleeping Lazarus

2011-08-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

Title: Sleeping Lazarus
Artist: Franciszek Zmurko
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: tbd.
Date: 1877
Location: Private Collection.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 14

John 11:38-44 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. “Take away the stone,” he said. “But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.” Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

Zmurko depicts Lazarus is in the tomb, but the light shining on his body suggests that the stone blocking its entrance has been partially pulled away. He is unconscious, perhaps still dead, but he also seems to be listening. Does he hear the voice of Jesus, calling his name? Zmurko specialized in paintings in which the subject seemed half-awake, half-asleep. The person in this painting, Lazarus, is not bothered by thoughts, but rests in an unconscious state. His muscles are shrunken in death but his face has a look of utter peace - and why not? He has led a good life and been a friend of Jesus - could he ask for more?

Franciszek Zmurko (July 1859 – October 1910) was a Polish painter. Zmurko began drawing lessons as a young boy in his hometown with the painter Franciszek Tepa. As an adolescent he moved to Krakow to study at the Academy of Fine Arts where he had lessons from Jan Matejko. In 1877 Zmurko moved to Vienna, Austria where he was accepted at the Vienna Academy, but left soon thereafter to study under Aleksander Wagner in Munich. Zmurko returned to Krakow in 1880 and then moved to Warsaw in 1882 where he remained until his death in 1910.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 13 - The Deposition

2011-07-31T08:10:00.000-07:00

Title: The Deposition
Artist: Arnold Böcklin
Medium: Tempera and colored varnish on panel
Size: 160 x 250 cm
Date: c. 1874
Location: Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 13

John 19:38-40 And after these things Joseph of Arimathaea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly through fear of the Jews, demanded of Pilate that he might take the body of Jesus: and Pilate allowed it. He came therefore and took away the body of Jesus. And Nicodemus also, who at first came to Jesus by night, came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds. They took therefore the body of Jesus and bound it up in linen with the spices, as it is the custom with the Jews to prepare for burial.

This painting demonstrates Böcklin's flair for archaization, one already employed by the Nazarenes, is seen in the Quattrocento coloring of this Deposition. A color palate consisting primarily of musty blues and greens, a deathly pallor covers the whole scene, as though the shade of Christ’s body is emanating and tinting the whole of the world. Part camp theatricality, part convinced and convincing Christianity, part prophecy, this canvas proved to be an Avant-Garde and unpopular work when first exhibited at the Vienna Exposition.

Arnold Böcklin (October 1827 –January 1901) was a Swiss symbolist painter. He was on of the major Swiss painter of the 19th century, and he exerted a great influence on the German-speaking countries through the expression of a heightened Romanticism and poeticism. He was trained in Germany, Flanders, and Paris, and spent seven years in Rome (1850-57), where he transformed his early naturalistic landscapes, more or less in the manner of Corot, into symbolic subjects with figures epitomizing the mood of the landscape. He was in Munich in 1871-74, in 1885 in Hottingen (Switzerland). However, like other German artists of the period, he spent much of rest of his life in Italy, where he died in Fiesole near Florence.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 12 - Virgin of the Deliverance

2011-07-30T08:04:00.000-07:00

Title: Virgin of the Deliverance
Artist: Ernest Hebert
Medium: Oil on panel
Size: 40.3 x 28.3 cm
Date: c. 1872
Location: The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 12

In art, the term “The Madonna” is applied specifically to an artwork in which Mary, with or without the infant Jesus, is the focus and central figure of the picture. Mary and the infant may be surrounded by adoring angels or worshiping saints, however paintings which have a narrative content are usually given a title that reflects the scene. Half-length paintings of the Madonna and Child are also common in Italian Renaissance painting, particularly in Venice.

This painting is a variant based on a large-scale altarpiece that Hébert painted in time for the Salon of 1872 and that was finally installed in the church of his native town, La Tronche, the following year. Unlike the original altarpiece, which has a patterned background, this version is stylized to recall the conventions of Byzantine icons. The gold ground, raised haloes and Greek letters-mu, rho, theta, and upsilon: the abbreviation of "Maria Theotokos" (Mary God-bearer), often found in Byzantine mosaics-lend the painting a schematic flatness that contrasts dramatically with the otherwise convincingly three-dimensional figures.

Ernest Hebert (November 1817 - December 1908), sometimes known as Antoine Auguste Ernest Hebert, was a French painter and academic. Though he took drawing lessons from the age of ten from the French painter Benjamin Rolland, his father wished him to become a lawyer, and in 1834 he moved to Paris to study law. While there he also studied drawing and painting, and in 1839, the year he passed his law exams, he also won the Prix de Rome for his painting 'The Cup of Joseph Found in the Sack of Benjamin.' During his lifetime Hebert became one of the most highly regarded and decorated painters of his generation, winning medals at several "Expositions Universelles" (World's Fairs), and the Grande Croix of the Legion of Honor in 1903.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 11 - Christ in Limbo

2011-07-29T06:37:00.000-07:00

Title: Christ in Limbo
Artist: Paul Cézanne
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 170 x 97 cm
Date: c. 1867
Location: Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 11

Christ’s Descent into Hell, or Descent into Limbo, is a legend not depicted in any of the canonical Gospels. One of the first written references can be found in the Apocryphal text, the Gospel of Nicodemus. Before his bodily Resurrection, Jesus descended into Hell and led the just, the patriarchs, the prophets of the Old Testament and Adam and Eve, into the light. Later, a clarity was introduced that they had not been in Hell at all, but in the bordering region, Limbo (from the Latin word limbus, a hem); it was taught that because they lived and died before the Christ's self-sacrifice for peoples redemption, they were put in the lower place until such time when Jesus could liberate them. the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "...Jesus, like all men, experienced death and in his soul joined the others in the realm of the dead. But he descended there as Savior, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there.”

During the 1860s, Cézanne turned his hand to murals to decorate the family home, Jas de Bouffan, near Aix-en-Provence. As indicated in documents from the period, this fragment, Christ in Limbo, was part of a much larger composition. Another work in the Musée d'Orsay, La Madeleine, was also part of it, although scholars attest there is no aesthetic reason to link the two. In Cézanne’s painting of Christ's descent into Limbo, the dwelling place between death and resurrection, the artist depicts the place with a careful use of color against a black background. The reds and peaches, combined with the loose brushstrokes. create a vigorous impasto intercepting light and portray a scene glimpsed through shimmering waves of heat. The souls of the Just in the Old Testament who await Redemption kneel before the Redeemer. In fact, the characters in the bottom left hand corner are probably Adam and Eve.

Paul Cézanne (January 1839 – October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavor to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism. The line attributed to both Matisse and Picasso that Cézanne "is the father of us all" cannot be easily dismissed. Cézanne's work demonstrates a mastery of design, color, tone, composition and draftsmanship. His often sensitive and exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and clearly recognizable. During his Dark Period in Paris, 1861–1870, Cézanne was given to depression, and his works of this period are characterized by dark colors and the heavy use of black. They differ sharply from his earlier watercolors and sketches at the École Spéciale de dessin at Aix-en-Provence in 1859, and the violence of expression is in contrast to his subsequent works.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 10 - Jesus Mocked by the Soldiers

2011-07-28T06:54:00.000-07:00

Title: Jesus Mocked by the Soldiers
Artist: Edouard Manet
Medium: Oil on board
Size: 190.82 x 148.27 cm
Date: 1865
Location: The Art Institute of Chicago.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 10

Mark 15:16-18 The soldiers took Jesus into the governor's palace (called the Praetorium) and called all the other soldiers together. They put a purple robe on Jesus and used thorny branches to make a crown for his head. They began to call out to him, "Hail, King of the Jews!"

Manet depicts the moment when Christ’s captors mock the “king of the Jews” by crowning him with thorns and covering him with a purple robe. Unlike more traditional academic religious painting that portrays Jesus as a divine, other-worldly being, the figure here is not idealized. Jesus is depicted as human and vulnerable, awkwardly posed and un-heroic in demeanor. In fact, it is the soldiers themselves who reveal Christ’s divinity to the viewer. Far from being the torturers whose violent gestures populate art history, these are men who seem almost stunned in the presence of Christ. The torturer with the rod kneels in homage more than he readies himself for his cruel task; the fur-clad figure at the right holds Christ's cloak as if it were a royal robe. Because of its decidedly rebellious presentation of the subject, Jesus Mocked by the Soldiers was received at the 1865 Salon with an outburst of negative criticism.

Édouard Manet (January 1832 – April 1883) was a French painter. As one of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism. His early masterworks, The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe) and Olympia, engendered great controversy and served as rallying points for the young painters who would create Impressionism. Today, these are considered watershed paintings that mark the genesis of modern art. Although his own work influenced and anticipated the Impressionist style, he resisted involvement in Impressionist exhibitions, partly because he did not wish to be seen as the representative of a group identity, and partly because he preferred to exhibit at the Salon.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 9 - The Wise and Foolish Virgins

2011-07-27T06:11:00.000-07:00

Title: The Wise and Foolish Virgins
Artist: Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones
Medium: Pen and ink and grey wash, with scratching out.
Size: 45.8 x 60.5 cm
Date: 1859
Location: Private collection.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 9

Matthew 25:1-13 “... the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep. At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’ Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’ They replied, ‘No, there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’ But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut. Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’ Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.”

Burne-Jones's early pen-and-ink drawings are among his rarest and most fascinating productions. Only some ten finished examples were executed. The Wise and Foolish Virgins, both large in scale and on paper, are qualities consistent with a more expansive, confident approach and a new interest in dramatic intensity and atmospheric effect. The influence of his mentor Rossetti is still quite evident, but by this time Burne-Jones has begun to find his own artistic voice. In fact the drawing has a good claim to be the masterpiece among his early works in this medium.

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet (August 1833 – June 1898) was an English artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company. Burne-Jones had intended to become a church minister, but under the influence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, co-founder the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, he decided to leave college to pursue a career in art. In February 1857, Rossetti wrote “Jones's designs are marvels of finish and imaginative detail, unequaled by anything unless perhaps Albert Dürer's finest works.” Burne-Jones was closely involved in the rejuvenation of the tradition of stained glass art in England.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 8 - The Disciples at Emmaus

2011-07-26T05:59:00.000-07:00

Title: The Disciples at Emmaus
Artist: Eugène Delacroix
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 55.2 x 47 cm
Date: 1853
Location: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 8

Luke 24:28-35 As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.” Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread.

Delacroix has located this miraculous apparition in a darkened interior, which becomes dramatically illuminated by Christ’s golden halo. Jesus stands with a powerful backward stance, echoing the diagonal line of the staircase, breaking the bread with his large hands. The casual posture of the disciple on the right conveys the relaxation of a meal shared among friends, whereas the disciple on the left registers the wonder of the moment. The surprised disciple’s face is turned toward Jesus, Delacroix preferring the use of a bodily gesture—an up-flung left hand—rather than facial expression to convey amazement. In addition to shrewd compositional strategies and theatrical lighting, the artist’s characteristically loose paint handling of his later compositions adds a further note of dramatic energy to the work.

Ferdinand Victor Eugene Delacroix (April 1798 – August 1863) was a French painter regarded from the outset of his career as a leader of the French Romantic school. In 1815 he entered the studio of the neoclassical painter Pierre Narcisse Guérin, where he met Théodore Géricault, a romantic painter by whom he was much influenced. Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on color and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modeled form. Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of color profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 7 Christ's Entry into Jerusalem

2011-07-25T06:20:00.000-07:00

Title: Christ's Entry into Jerusalem
Artist: Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin
Medium: Fresco
Size: tbd
Date: 1846
Location: Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 7

Matthew 21:1-9 As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.” This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet: “Say to Daughter Zion, ‘See, your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’” The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”.

The wall panels throughout the nave and choir of Saint-Germain-des-Prés are work of Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin, from 1842-1849. It is apparent from contemporary criticism that Flandrin's mural scheme attracted much attention for its abstracted forms, and flattened frieze like compositions running the length of the choir. Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, in the Sanctuary on the left of the high altar, is a fine example in this outstanding series of frescos. Christ, majestic though he rides a humble donkey, is surrounded by an adoring throng. Men and women bow down before him, the excitement so great that to the right a man even lifts a child to glimpse “the Son of David.” The compression of depth that Flandrin achieved creates an even further sense of being part of a packed throng.

Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin (March 1809 – March 1864) was a 19th-century French painter. He was the second of three sons, all of whom were painters in some aspect. Hippolyte and Paul, his younger brother, spent some time at Lyon, saving to leave for Paris in 1829 and study under Louis Hersent. Eventually, they settled in the studio of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, who became not only their instructor but their friend for life. At first, Hippolyte reportedly struggled as a poor artist. However, in 1832, he won the Prix de Rome for his painting Recognition of Theseus by his Father. This prestigious art scholarship meant that he was no longer limited by his poverty. Though Flandrin painted a great number of portraits, he is much more known today for his monumental decorative paintings, such as those at St Germain des Prés in Paris.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 6 - Angels Ministering to Christ in the Wilderness

2011-07-24T07:07:00.000-07:00

Title: Angels Ministering to Christ in the Wilderness
Artist: Thomas Cole
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: tbd
Date: 1843
Location: Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Ma.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 6

Matthew 4:10-11 Jesus said to him, Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.' Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and ministered to him.

In this painting Cole provides us with two sources of primary light – the distant horizon and the celestial spot light that shines down directly on an exhausted yet satisfied Christ. The angles, supplicant in their service, provide food and drink. In contrast to the barren stretches of landscape behind him, Jesus is very cozy in the intimate group in the foreground. Despite the esteem with which Cole's allegorical works were regarded, some patrons preferred his identifiably American scenes. Cole was disappointed at this preference, and paintings like Angels Ministering to Christ in the Wilderness seem to be an attempt to satisfy both his desire for scenes invested with moral or literary meaning, and his patrons desire for pastoral and natural imagery.

Thomas Cole (February 1801 – February, 1848) was an English-born American artist. He is regarded as the founder of the Hudson River School, an American art movement that flourished in the mid-19th century. Cole's Hudson River School, as well as his own work, was known for its realistic and detailed portrayal of American landscape and wilderness, which feature themes of romanticism and naturalism. He was born in Bolton, Lancashire, England, and in 1818 his family emigrated to the United States, settling in Steubenville, Ohio. Cole learned the rudiments of his profession from a wandering portrait painter named Stein. However, he had little success painting portraits, and his interest shifted to landscape. Cole's unexpected death in 1848 at the young age of forty-seven was deeply mourned in New York art and literary circles. Both his art and his legacy provided the foundation for the native landscape school that dominated American painting until the late 1860s.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 5 - Christus Consolator

2011-07-23T08:21:00.000-07:00

Title: Christus Consolator
Artist: Ary Scheffer
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 184 x 248 cm
Date: 1836-37
Location: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 5

Luke 4:18: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, I have come to heal those who are brokenhearted and to announce to the prisoners their deliverance; to liberate those who are crushed by their chains.”

At the center of the composition is the figure of Christ, surrounded by the afflicted and oppressed. A kneeling woman mourns her dead child, while in the background we see an exile with his walking stick, a castaway with a piece of the wreckage in his hand, and a suicide with a dagger. Placed near these groups are Torquato Tasso (crowned with laurel), a brilliant 16th-century poet imprisoned as a madman, and figures representing the three ages of women. To the right of Christ are the oppressed of both the past and present, among them a Polish independence fighter, a Greek Souliote warrior, a Roman slave, and a black slave. With his left hand Christ releases from his shackles a dying man, the personification of Poland with the shattered weapons of its failed insurrection against Russia by his side, his exposed, wounded body draped in the Polish flag. The repentant Mary Magdalene kneels beside Christ. It is an encyclopedic interpretation of human history that transports the viewer from modern-day Poland, Greece, and America to both the ancient and medieval eras. The composition reflects the renewed interest in France during the 1830s for a more liberal activism within the Catholic Church. On a personal level, it also reveals the artist’s appreciation for various European art movements, especially, the markedly religious Nazarene circle in Germany.

The Dutch-born and French-trained artist Ary Scheffer (February 1795 - June 1858) was one of the pre-eminent Romantic painters active in Paris during the first half of the 19th century. Although his earliest works concentrated on illustrating Romantic literature or overtly sentimental genre subjects, after 1830 he became increasingly occupied with Old and New Testament themes. Christus Consolator created a sensation when exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1837, where it was purchased by the French monarch’s son, the Duc d’Orléans, as a wedding present for his Lutheran fiancée, the Princess Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Scheffer’s religious subjects were the source of his international reputation during his lifetime, and, one might argue, the epitome of his genius. Christus Consolator was, after Holman Hunt’s contemporaneous Light of the World, the most popular religious image throughout the Western world during the middle decades of the 19th century.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 4 - Death on a Pale Horse

2011-07-22T06:58:00.000-07:00

Title: Death on a Pale Horse
Artist: J. M. W. Turner
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 59.7 x75.6 cm
Date: c. 1825-30
Location: Tate Gallery, London.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 4

Revelation 6:7-9 When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

Although possibly incomplete, the subject can be identified as Death, the last of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who announce the Day of Judgment in the Book of Revelation. The choice may have been in response to the death of Turner’s father in 1829, suggested by the unusual treatment which is both tender and menacing. Death appears, not as a triumphant, upright figure astride his horse, but as a phantom emerging from a turbulent mist: his skeletal form, arms outstretched, and draped submissively over the horse’s pale back. Such disturbing visions were considered to embody the very concept of the Sublime.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (April 1775 – December 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, water colorist and print maker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivaling history painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolor landscape painting. As he grew older, Turner became more eccentric. He had few close friends except for his father, who lived with him for 30 years, eventually working as his studio assistant. His father's death in 1829 had a profound effect on him, and thereafter he was subject to bouts of depression.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 3 - Lamentation

2011-07-21T06:01:00.000-07:00

Title: Lamentation
Artist: Paul Delaroche
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 49.5 x 32.7 cm
Date: 1820
Location: Dahesh Museum of Art, Greenwich, CT.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 3

John 19:25-30 Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home. Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

This is one of Delaroche's earliest known works and exemplifies the religious imagery that found favor in the opening years of the Bourbon Restoration (1814–1830), when the Catholic church regained much of the power it had lost during the French Revolution. In 1820 the Duchess of Orléans, wife of the Duke of Orléans (the future King Louis-Philippe), commissioned the young Delaroche, still an unknown student in the atelier of Baron Gros, to paint a Lamentation for the family chapel at the Palais Royal in Paris. That same year he also executed this smaller version, perhaps a presentation model submitted for final approval. However, the two compositions differ substantially, and this could also have been an independent work painted for the member of the ducal household to whom it is dedicated. Delaroche created a traditional but deeply moving depiction of the mourning Virgin, whose intense suffering is symbolized by the swords that pierce her heart.

Hippolyte Delaroche (July 1797 – November 1856), commonly known as Paul Delaroche, was a French painter born in Paris. Delaroche was born into a wealthy family and was trained by Antoine-Jean, Baron Gros, who then painted life-size histories and had many students. By 1822, with the arrival of Romanticism in Paris challenging the dominance of Neo-classicism, Delaroche was to steer a course between the two currents, unwilling to opt for full-blooded Romanticism for fear of jeopardizing his public standing. Delaroche's paintings, with their straightforward technique and dramatic compositions, became very popular. He applied essentially the same treatment to the characters of distant historical times, the founders of Christianity, and various figures of his own day such as "Napoleon at Fontainebleau."

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 2 - Jesus Handing St Peter the Keys to Paradise

2011-07-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

Title: Jesus Handing St Peter the Keys to Paradise
Artist: Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 280 x 217 cm
Date: 1820
Location: Musée Ingres, Montauban.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 2

Matthew 16:15-19 “But what about you?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven.”

The success of Jesus Handing St Peter the Keys to Paradise lead Ingres to stiffen many of his compositions, giving the historical scenes as well as portraits sometimes a too pronounced solemn character. In this image, however, the stiffness achieves the wonderful effect of making the painting seem like a living Icon. The photo-realism of the robes contrasts the stylized halos; the realistic expressions contrast the formality of their posture, and so on. Even as a guardian of tradition, Ingres cannot help but nod towards the future.

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (August 1780 – January 1867) was a French Neoclassical painter. Although he considered himself to be a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, by the end of his life it was Ingres's portraits, both painted and drawn, that were recognized as his greatest legacy. A man profoundly respectful of the past, he assumed the role of a guardian of academic orthodoxy against the ascendant Romantic style. Ingres influence on later generations of artists has been considerable. His most significant heir was Degas, who studied under Louis Lamothe, a minor disciple of Ingres. In the 20th century, Picasso and Matisse were among those who acknowledged a debt to the great classicist; Matisse described him as the first painter "to use pure colors, outlining them without distorting them."

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 1 - The Conversion of Saul

2011-07-19T06:07:00.000-07:00

Title: The Conversion of Saul
Artist: William Blake
Medium: Watercolor and pen drawing over pencil
Size: 40.9 x 35.8 cm
Date: c. 1800
Location: The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino.

19 IMAGES FROM THE 19th CENTURY: PART 1

Acts of the Apostles 9:3-9 As Saul was coming near the city of Damascus, suddenly a light from the sky flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him “Saul, Saul! Why do you persecute me?” “Who are you, Lord?” he asked. “I am Jesus, whom you persecute,” the voice said. “But get up and go into the city, where you will be told what you must do.” The men who were traveling with Saul had stopped, not saying a word; they heard the voice but could not see anyone.

Rather than falling to the earth as the bible describes Saul, Blake pictures him astride a great horse that has gone to ground. Saul looks up to the vision above in rapt awe and extends his arms in a cruciform gesture that foreshadows his acceptance of Christ’s crucifixion as a cornerstone of his new faith. One face on the left is turned upward to be illuminated by divine light, but the remainder of the helmeted soldiers accompanying Saul bow their heads and cover their eyes, hearing a voice but seeing no man. The single visual witness stresses the corporeality of Christ’s presence and suggests that the vision given to Saul can transfigure all but those who willfully turn from the light.

William Blake (November 1757 – August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and print maker. One of Blake’s main influences was the society in which he lived. He lived during revolutionary times and witnessed the downfall of London during Britain’s war with republican France. His disgust with society grew as he matured and 'The Songs of Innocence and Experience' depict this transition. He held radical religious ideas for the time; he did not believe in a religion of nature or reason, but thought man’s nature was imaginative and mystical. Blake’s preoccupation with good and evil as well as his strong philosophical and religious beliefs remained throughout his life and he never stopped depicting them in his poetry and engravings. He died at the age of sixty-nine in 1827. It seems his art had been too adventurous and unconventional for early nineteenth century, and he did not become widely known until 1863 with Alexander Gilchrist’s biography.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 20 – ST PANTELEIMON

2011-07-08T06:19:00.000-07:00

Title: St. Panteleimon the Healer
Artist: Nicholas Roerich
Medium: Tempera on canvas
Size: 44.5 x 78.5 cm
Date: 1931
Location: Nicholas Roerich Museum, New York.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 20 – ST PANTELEIMON

Saint Panteleimon, or Saint Pantaleon, counted in the West among the late-medieval Fourteen Holy Helpers and in the East as one of the Holy Unmercenary Healers, was a martyr of Nicomedia in Bithynia during the Diocletian persecution of 303 AD. Pantaleon was the son of a rich pagan, Eustorgius of Nicomedia, and had been instructed in Christianity by his Christian mother, Saint Eubula; however, after her death he fell away from the Christian church, while he studied medicine with a renowned physician Euphrosinos. He was won back to Christianity by Saint Hermolaus, who convinced him that Christ was the better physician: "But, my friend, of what use are all thy acquirements in this art, since thou art ignorant of the science of salvation?” By miraculously healing a blind man by invoking the name of Jesus over him, Panteleimon converted his father, upon whose death he came into possession of a large fortune, but freed his slaves and, distributing his wealth among the poor, developed a great reputation in Nicomedia. Envious colleagues denounced him to the emperor during the Diocletian persecution. The emperor wished to save him and sought to persuade him to apostasy. Panteleimon, however, openly confessed his faith, and as proof that Christ is the true God, he healed a paralytic. Notwithstanding this, he was condemned to death by the emperor, who regarded the miracle as an exhibition of magic.

In the Eastern tradition, this saint is canonically depicted as a beardless young man with a full head of curly hair. It is interesting, then, that a Russian painter should diverge so profoundly, and give us a wizened old Panteleimon, appearing to gather flowers and herbs from the flourishing mountain meadows. Medicinal ingredients, perhaps, for his work as a healer. And then, in keeping with Roerichs deep spiritual connection with the mountains, one wonders if the Saint is not taking from the earth, but rather giving back to her.

Nicholas Konstantinovich Roerich (October 1874 - December 1947), was first-born son of lawyer and notary, Konstantin Roerich and his wife Maria. He was raised in the comfortable environment of an upper middle-class Russian family with its advantages of contact with the writers, artists, and scientists who often came to visit the Roerichs. His father did not want him to pursue painting as a career, but rather to study law. He made a compromise, and after finishing his studies in 1893, Roerich simultaneously entered the Saint-Petersburg University (he graduated in 1898) and the Emperor’s Academy of Arts. From 1895, he studied in the studio of the famous Russian landscape painter Arkhip Kuindzhi. This training undoubtedly came to fruition later in life when, in 1928, he settled his family in the Kullu Valley at an elevation of 6,500 feet in the Himalayan foothills, with a magnificent view of the valley and the surrounding mountains. Here they established their home and the headquarters of the Urusvati Himalayan Research Institute.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 19 – ST LUKE THE EVANGELIST

2011-07-07T06:25:00.000-07:00

Title: The Evangelist Luke
Artist: Unknown
Medium: Illuminated Manuscript
Size: 30.3 x 25.8 cm
Date: c. 860
Location: The Morgan Library & Museum, New York.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 19 – ST LUKE THE EVANGELIST

St Luke the Evangelist was an Early Christian writer who the Church Fathers such as Jerome and Eusebius said was the author of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. Modern scholarship reinforces the view that the author of these two books is one and the same. One of the most extensive writers of the New Testament, his Gospel is considerably longer than St. Matthew's, his two books are about as long as St. Paul's fourteen Epistles. Luke was a Greco-Syrian physician who lived in the Greek city of Antioch in Ancient Syria. His earliest notice is in Paul's Epistle to Philemon, verse 24. He is also mentioned in Colossians 4:14 and 2 Timothy 4:11, two works commonly ascribed to Paul. Luke died at age 84 in Boeotia, according to a "fairly early and widespread tradition". According to Nikiphoros-Kallistos Xanthopoulos and others, Luke's Tomb was located in Thebes (Greece), from whence his relics were transferred to Constantinople in the year 357.

This, the only Reims Gospel Book written in gold, is an exquisite example of a Carolingian manuscript. As is usual in illustrated Gospel Books, a "portrait" of an Evangelist precedes each of the four Gospels. Such author portraits were derived from antique models; here Luke wears a Roman toga and holds a basket containing scrolls, the standard book form in antiquity.

The most distinctive and influential center of Carolingian illumination was Reims, which flourished during the reigns of Charlemagne and his successors. St. Remi was then under the brilliant leadership of Archbishop Hincmar (845–82), counselor of Emperor Charles the Bald (r. 840–77), grandson of Charlemagne. The volume was rebound in the 18th century and arms of the Abbaye de St-Remy stamped on back. It was kept at the monastery at least until 1790, when the Revolutionary authorities removed 248 manuscripts. It eventually ended up for sale in Paris in 1828.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 18 – ST MARGARET THE VIRGIN

2011-07-06T06:51:00.000-07:00

Title: St Margaret
Artist: Ernest Hebert
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 66.2 x 34.1 cm
Date: c. 1877
Location: Musée National Ernest Hébert, Paris.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 18 – ST MARGARET THE VIRGIN

St Margaret the Virgin, also known as Margaret of Antioch, was the daughter of a pagan priest named Aedesius. Her mother dying soon after her birth, Margaret was nursed by a nearby Christian. Having embraced Christianity and consecrated her virginity to God, she was disowned by her father and adopted by her nurse. Later, Olybrius, Governor of the Roman Diocese of the East, offered her marriage at the price of her renunciation of Christianity. Upon her refusal, she was cruelly tortured, during which various miraculous incidents occurred. One of these involved being swallowed by Satan in the shape of a dragon, from which she escaped alive when the cross she carried irritated the dragon's innards. Finally the Governor ordered her beheaded.

Hebert became renowned for his painting, 'La Malaria', in the 1850 Salon, and perhaps thought of as a principally a classic painter. He deserves, however, to figure among the Symbolists as well. His religious and mythological pieces, such as Ophelias, were wistful and avoided female figures in a lyrical and passionate atmosphere. Accordingly, his St Margaret shows us a triumphant Virgin. Looking Heavenward she holds the dragon pinned and helpless with her radiant cross. Though she may have the visage of one of Raphael’s Madonnas, the vibrant colors and attention to fine detail make this painting distinctly Hebert’s.

Ernest Hebert (November 1817 - December 1908), sometimes known as Antoine Auguste Ernest Hebert, was a French painter and academic. Hebert was yet another of the artists working in the orbit of Paul Delaroche whose name fell into relative obscurity in the last century. He was, in fact, like Delaroche, one of the most highly regarded and decorated painters of his generation, winning medals at several "Expositions Universelles" (World's Fairs). He received the Grande Croix of the Legion of Honor in 1903.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 17 – ST JOHN THE BAPTIST

2011-07-05T07:05:00.000-07:00

Title: Salome
Artist: Lucas Cranach the Elder
Medium: Oil on poplar panel
Size: 87 x 58 cm
Date: c. 1530
Location: Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 17 – ST JOHN THE BAPTIST

John the Baptist (c. 6 BC – c. 36 AD) was an itinerant preacher and a major religious figure who led a movement of baptism at the Jordan River. Most biblical historians agree that John baptized Jesus at "Bethany beyond the Jordan," by wading into the water with Jesus from the eastern bank. Christians believe that John the Baptist had a specific role ordained by God as forerunner or precursor of Jesus, who was the foretold Messiah. In addition to the Canonical gospels, John the Baptist is also mentioned by Jewish historian Josephus, whose accounts of John appear compatible with the account in the New Testament. In the Gospel accounts of John's death, Herod has John imprisoned for denouncing his marriage. John condemned Herod for marrying Herodias, the former wife of his brother Philip, in violation of Old Testament Law. Later at a banquet her daughter dances before Herod, who, in appreciation of her dance, offers her a favor in return. Herodias tells her daughter to ask for the head of John the Baptist, which is subsequently delivered to her on a plate.

This is one of the characteristic portraits which were painted in large number by the artist and his workshop. It has been surmised that most of the sitters of these portraits were noble ladies of the court in Saxony. This image has taken the events depicted in the New Testament, and transported the scene to 16th century Europe. In fact, if one were to only view the top two-thirds of this painting, it would seem like many genteel portraits of court ladies that were done in the same period. It is not until the head of the Baptist is viewed on the platter, with the gory neck wound, mouth agape, and eyes fading, that the horror of what has transpired hits home.

Lucas Cranach the Elder (October 1472 – October 1553), was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker. He was court painter to the Electors of Saxony for most of his career, and is known for his portraits, both of German princes and those of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation. He painted many religious subjects, first in the Catholic tradition, and later trying to find new ways of conveying Lutheran religious concerns in art. After Luther's initial hostility to large public religious images had softened, Cranach painted a number of "Lutheran altarpieces" of the Last Supper and other subjects, in which Christ was shown in a traditional manner, including a halo, but the apostles, without halos, were portraits of leading reformers. He also produced a number of violent anti-Catholic propaganda prints, in a cruder style, directed against the Papacy and the Catholic clergy.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 16 – ST PETER

2011-07-04T06:50:00.000-07:00

Title: The Liberation of St Peter
Artist: Gerrit van Honthorst
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 129 x 179 cm
Date: 1616-18
Location: Staatliche Museen, Berlin.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 16 – ST PETER

Simon Peter (possibly died AD 67), was an early Christian leader, who is featured prominently in the New Testament Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Peter was the son of John or of Jonah and was from the village of Bethsaida in the province of Galilee. His brother Andrew was also an apostle. Simon Peter is venerated in multiple churches and is regarded as the first Pope by the Roman Catholic Church. Acts of the Apostles 12:3–19 tells how Peter was put into prison by King Herod, but the night before his trial an angel appeared to him, and told him to leave. Peter's chains fell off, and he followed the angel out of prison. Scholars have noted the direct divine intervention in this narrative, and it is contrasted to the story of James, who was executed by Herod. That James should die while Peter should escape is a mystery of divine providence. It has been suggested that this incident is portrayed as being a type of resurrection for Peter. One of the major themes of the Book of Acts is that "Christ’s servants follow in His footsteps," and events of the chapter "recapitulate the resurrection of Jesus."

A sense of Baroque drama is found in Van Honthorst's Liberation of St Peter. The artist was beloved for his nocturnes, so much so that the Italians called him "Gherardo della Notte". In this painting, the Utrecht artist made the entrance of Peter's liberating angel into the light source, so illuminating the dark prison by a celestial blaze that pours in through the suddenly opened door. The angel’s outstretched hand and flowing garments capture a sense of urgency and movement, but Peter is still surprised, unable to fully comprehend what he sees, thinking “he was seeing a vision”.

Gerrit van Honthorst, also known as Gerard van Honthorst (November 1592 - April 1656), was a Dutch painter and a leading member of the Utrecht school influenced by the Italian painter Caravaggio. He was born in Utrecht as the son of a textile painter. His younger brother Willem also became a painter. Van Honthorst was apprenticed to Abraham Bloemaert, the most celebrated master in Utrecht, and went to Italy around 1610-1615, when Caravaggio's influence there was at its height. During his career, Van Honthorst's overwhelming success brought him tremendous wealth and he lived in the lap of luxury. Rembrandt's use of Caravaggesque devices in his early works derives in large part from his knowledge of Honthorst's paintings.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 15 – ST SEBASTIAN

2011-07-03T09:47:00.000-07:00

Title: St Sebastian
Artist: Michel Henricot
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 30 x 30 cm
Date: 2006
Location: Private Collection.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 15 – ST SEBASTIAN

Saint Sebastian (died c. 288) was a Christian saint and martyr, who is said to have been killed during the Roman emperor Diocletian's persecution of Christians. Diocletian commanded Sebastian be led to the field and there to be bound to a stake to be shot at as punishment for his proselytizing, "And the archers shot at him till he was as full of arrows as an urchin," leaving him there for dead. Miraculously, the arrows did not kill him. Irene of Rome, the widow of martyred Christian Castulus, went to retrieve his body to bury it, and found he was still alive. She brought him back to her house and nursed him back to health. Having regained his strength, he harangued Diocletian as he passed by, and the emperor then had him beaten to death. He is venerated in the Roman Catholic, and Orthodox Churches.

This portrait of St Sebastian is unique in that it has moved away from the standard portrait of a young, beautiful, white, shirtless, and baby-faced icon. In Henricot’s work it is the suffering that is foremost, the torso pierced by long arrows that are graphically embedded in flesh. It is not another portrait of a beautiful Saint to admire, but a reminder of the physical suffering that Sebastian endured in order to spread the word of Christ among a hostile environment; it is a stark portrayal of the agony that will be meted out to those who oppose the status quo, to those who will stand up in the face of injustice and find the courage to “harangue the emperor”. Henricot’s portrait reminds us that emulating the life of Christ is not all accolades and honors, but true, painful suffering.

Michel Henricot (1940) is one of the most prominent contemporary French visionary painters. He had his first individual show in 1961, in Galerie Marignan, Paris, and has since had numerous exhibitions in France and abroad, e.g., Germany, Italy, and the United States. Among his influences, Henricot is fascinated with the work of Gustave Moreau, Max Klinger, Max Ernst, Egyptian art, and Renaissance Italian painting. More of his work can be seen at the JKK Fine Arts website: http://www.jkkfinearts.com/Henricot/

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 14 – ST CECILIA

2011-07-02T09:51:00.000-07:00

Title: Santa Cecilia
Artist: Bernardo Daddi
Medium: Tempera on wood panel
Size: 89.5 x 49.5 cm
Date: c. 1348
Location: Museo Diocesano, Collezione Crespi, Milan.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 14 – ST CECILIA

St Cecilia, so often glorified in the fine arts and in poetry, is one of the most venerated martyrs of Christian antiquity. Legend has it that Cecilia, a virgin of a senatorial family and a Christian from her infancy, was given in marriage by her parents to a noble pagan youth Valerianus. When, after the celebration of the marriage, the couple had retired to the wedding-chamber, Cecilia told Valerianus that she was betrothed to an angel who jealously guarded her body; therefore Valerianus must take care not to violate her virginity. Valerianus wished to see the angel, whereupon Cecilia sent him to the third milestone on the Via Appia where he should meet Bishop (Pope) Urbanus. Valerianus obeyed, was baptized by the pope, and returned a Christian to Cecilia. An angel then appeared to the two and crowned them with roses and lilies. When Tiburtius, the brother of Valerianus, came to them, he too was won over to Christianity. As zealous children of the Faith both brothers distributed rich alms and buried the bodies of the confessors who had died for Christ. The prefect, Turcius Almachius, condemned them to death; an officer of the prefect, Maximus, appointed to execute this sentence, was himself converted and suffered martyrdom with the two brothers.

This portrait of St Cecilia is typical of Daddi’s style, imbued with emotional tenderness and grace, in contrast to his contemporaries more massive and somber mode of expression. Daddi had close stylistic affinities to painters of the “miniaturist tendency”, and his intimate, lyrical style was best suited to works on a small scale. The saint’s naturalistic looking expression, the detail in the crown of roses and lilies, and the intricacy of her halo are all indicative of a mature work by this Florentine master.

Bernardo Daddi (c. 1280 – 1348) was a Florentine painter, the outstanding painter in Florence in the period after the death of Giotto (who was possibly his teacher). Daddi ran a busy workshop specializing in small devotional panels and portable altarpieces. His signed and dated works include a polyptych of The Crucifixion with Eight Saints (Courtauld Institute, London, 1348) and the works attributed to him include frescos of the Martyrdoms of SS. Lawrence and Stephen in Santa Croce. His style is a sweetened version of Giotto's, tempering the latter's gravity with Sienese grace and lightness. He favored smiling Madonnas, teasing children, and an abundance of flowers and trailing draperies. His lyrical manner was extremely popular and his influence endured into the second half of the century. Like many other artists of his time, Daddi died during the black death of 1348.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 13 – ST MARK

2011-07-01T13:31:00.000-07:00

Title: St Mark
Artist: Angnolo Bronzion
Medium: Oil on wood
Size: tbd
Date: c. 1525
Location: Cappella Capponi, Santa Felicità, Florence.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 13 – ST MARK

Saint Mark the Evangelist is the traditional name of the author of the Gospel of Mark. Tradition identifies him with the John Mark mentioned as a companion of Saint Paul in the Acts of the Apostles. John Mark accompanied Paul and Barnabas, who was Mark’s cousin, on Paul's first missionary journey. After a sharp dispute, Barnabas separated from Paul, taking Mark with him to Cyprus. In AD 43, about 10 years after the ascension of Christ, Saint Mark traveled to Alexandria and founded the Church of Alexandria, which today is claimed by the Coptic Orthodox Church. Aspects of the Coptic liturgy can be traced back to Saint Mark himself. He became the first bishop of Alexandria and he is honored as the founder of Christianity in Africa. Some are said to have resented his efforts to turn them away from the worship of their traditional Egyptian gods, and in AD 68 they placed a rope around his neck and dragged him through the streets until he was dead.

Four tondos with the Evangelists still adorn the pendentives that once supported the old cupola of the Cappella Capponi in the church of Santa Felicità in Florence. Except for the painting of St John, the precise authorship of the other three portraits has posed considerable problems for scholars. As Vasari only attributes two of the tondi to Bronzino, without specifying which, scholars are still divided over which and how many of them were painted by Bronzino. Probably Bronzino's is St Mark with its palette of yellow and red tones contrasting with the green of the mantle wrapped around the figure, which looks as if it is peering through a window, an idea drawn from the Gospel. The figures of the Evangelists, with their distinctly Michelangiolesque flavor, have a vigor deriving from the way their heads are twisted and pushed forward. They are wrapped in ample robes, whose bold colors stand out against the dark backgrounds. This play of strong contrasts, which exalts the delicate outlines of the colored surfaces, is in keeping with the refined style of the entire decoration of the chapel.

Agnolo di Cosimo (November 1503 – November 1572), usually known as Il Bronzino, or Agnolo Bronzino, was an Italian Mannerist painter from Florence. His sobriquet, Bronzino, in all probability refers to his auburn hair, or possibly derived from his having a dark complexion. The son of a butcher, according to his contemporary Vasari, Bronzino was a pupil first of Raffaellino del Garbo, and then of Pontormo, to whom he was apprenticed at 14. Pontormo exercised a dominant influence on Bronzino's developing style, and the two were to remain collaborators for most of the former's life. Towards the end of his life, Bronzino took a prominent part in the activities of the Florentine Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, of which he was a founding member in 1563.The painter Alessandro Allori was his favourite pupil, and Bronzino was living in the Allori family house at the time of his death in Florence in 1572 (Alessandro was also the father of Cristofano Allori). Bronzino spent the majority of his career in Florence.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 12 – ST MICHAEL

2011-06-30T16:12:00.000-07:00

Title: The Archangel St Michael
Artist: Jaume Huguet
Medium: Tempera, stucco reliefs and gold leaf on wood
Size: 213 x 136 cm
Date: c. 1455-1460
Location: Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 12 – ST MICHAEL

Saint Michael the Archangel (Hebrew “who is like God" mi-ke-El) is an archangel in Jewish, and Islamic tradition, and has been part of Christian teachings since the earliest times. Only Michael is called an archangel in the Bible. He is viewed as the field commander of the Army of God. He is mentioned by name in the Book of Daniel, the Book of Jude, and the Book of Revelation, in which he leads God's armies against Satan's forces during his uprising. The original meaning of the name Michael gave rise to the Latin phrase ‘Quis ut Deus?’ which can be seen on many artistic portrayals when he rhetorically and scornfully asks ‘Who is like God?’ as he defeats Satan. The Prayer to Saint Michael is part of the Roman Catholic Ritual and can be used as part of the Roman Catholic practice of exorcism. His other roles include saving souls at the hour of death, weighing souls on Judgment Day and acting as Guardian of the Church.

The painting belongs to the central compartment of the altarpiece of Saint Michael of the Retailers. The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya has five more compartments from the same work. The altarpiece comes from the chapel of the Shopkeepers' and Retailer's guild, in the church of Santa Maria del Pi, Barcelona. The other panels include such well known depictions of St. Michael as ‘Apparition of Saint Michael at the Castle of Sant'Angelo’, and ‘Saint Michael Vanquishes the Antichrist’. In this portrait, Huguet style combines Gothic traditions (compressed space and generous use of gilding) with a certain Flemish realism in the depiction of the figures.

Jaume Huguet (1412 - 1492) was a Catalan painter, who is considered to represent the golden age of Catalan Gothic painting. Originally from Valls, he moved to Tarragona to stay with his uncle Pere Huguet, who was also a painter. When they moved to Barcelona he was exposed to modern trends of the time. Between 1440 and 1445 he worked in Zaragoza and later in Tarragona, where he was influenced by the Flemish style of Luis Dalmau. His studio produced many sumptuous composite altarpieces of the type that became typical in Spanish art and his work exercised a wide influence on the painting of Catalonia and Aragón.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 11 – ST GEORGE

2011-06-29T13:01:00.000-07:00

Title: Saint George and the Dragon
Artist: Gustave Moreau
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 141 x 96.5 cm
Date: 1889-90
Location: National Gallery, London.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 11 – ST GEORGE

Saint George (c. 275 – April 303) was, according to tradition, a Roman soldier in the Guard of Diocletian, who is venerated as a Christian martyr. In hagiography Saint George is one of the most venerated saints as well as being the patron saint of several nations. The episode of Saint George and the Dragon is Eastern in origin, brought back with the Crusaders and retold. The city of Silene was terrorized by a dragon, and to appease the dragon the people fed it their children. One day the king's daughter was to be fed to the dragon, when, by chance, St George rode past, and subdued the dragon. So that the king and the people of Silene would convert, George slew the dragon. Remembering the unscrupulous freedom with which any wild story, even when pagan in origin, was appropriated by the early hagiographers to the honor of a popular saint, scholars are fairly safe in assuming that the Acts of St. George, though ancient in date and preserved to us (with endless variations) in many different languages, afford absolutely no indication at all for arriving at the saint's authentic history.

This late work is one of the Moreau’s rare completed oils. The design is based on a drawing that he had produced about twenty years earlier. The figures of the horse and the dragon are reminiscent of those of Raphael, but the painting is otherwise a more abstract and ornamental rendering of the legendary subject. The haloed figure of the saint recalls works of the early Renaissance that Moreau would have seen in Italy, notably those of Carpaccio and Crivelli. The figure of the princess with her hands folded in prayer in the right background, and the visionary Gothic castle in the distance, have been compared to those seen in eastern miniatures.

Gustave Moreau (April 1826 – April 1898) was a French Symbolist painter whose main emphasis was the illustration of biblical and mythological figures. He trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The work of Delacroix - and that of Theodore Chassériau, who was an admirer of Delacroix's and a friend of Moreau's - was a great influence on his development. He visited Italy and developed an interest in Byzantine art and the primitive Italian painters. Moreau sought to perpetuate the traditions of religious and mythological painting, at a time when naturalism was becoming increasingly dominant. Hostile criticism of his work caused him to exhibit only intermittently at the Salon, though later he was elected a member of the Academy. He also taught at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts from 1892, winning the admiration of students, who included Matisse and Georges Rouault. He was a leading painter of the French Symbolist movement.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 10 – ST JOAN OF ARC

2011-06-28T07:36:00.000-07:00

Title: Joan of Arc
Artist: Noah Massey
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 111.7 x 73.7 cm
Date: 2010
Location: Private Collection.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 10 – ST JOAN OF ARC

Saint Joan of Arc or The Maid of Orléans (c. 1412 – 30 May 1431) is considered a national heroine of France and a Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France who claimed Divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years’ War and paved the way for the coronation of Charles VII. She later testified that she experienced her first vision around 1424 at the age of 12 years, when she was out alone in a field and saw visions of figures she identified as Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret, who told her to drive out the English and bring the Dauphin to Rheims for his coronation. She said she cried when they left, as they were so beautiful. A remarkable military leader, often ignoring the commands of her fellow military leaders and war councils, she lead soldiers and peasants alike against the English to victory. Though she was continuously belittled and disregarded by men of her own rank she was renowned by the men who served under her for her behavior both on and off the battle field. She was captured by the Burgundians, sold to the English, tried by an ecclesiastical court, and burned at the stake on May 30th, 1431, when she was nineteen years old.

Joan is presented to us in an image the encompasses her conflicting aspects. A pubescent girl, her cheeks are rosy and childlike, almost a cherub, but in her eyes are full of wisdom. Though her hand rests on a sword, prepared at any moment to battle, she is surrounded by an army that look like toys from another era. But the flames that surround her remind us that she was not just a little girl playing with toys, but a warrior, who followed the impetus of her visions, and who died an agonizing martyrs death.

Noah Massey is a contemporary American painter and graphic artist. As part of an artist’s statement, Noah writes: “I am interested in the dual nature of existence. What I have read concerning Catholic Saints has stressed their ability to separate and overcome the destruction of their bodies. These stories of martyrdom, torture and temptation demonstrate, in the extreme, the equality of all mankind in suffering. My paintings are not the whole story of the saint they represent. The works are instead my interpretation of overcoming and reunification. Some of the saints, in the midst of their bodily destruction, find salvation in humor, stoicism, defiance, generosity, and preparation. Utilizing contemporary graffiti styles and items of modern fashion the paintings draw a comparison between modern existence and that of the beatified who lived from the 2nd to 11th centuries. The paintings create a psychological space that is abundant with pain but free of panic, the place where decisions of fate and faith are made. It is my desire to create paintings that seduce the viewer into believing that impossible challenges and trials can be overcome, even by the weakest of us.” More information can be found on Noah’s website at http://noahmassey.com/

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 9 – ST PAUL

2011-06-27T06:20:00.000-07:00

Title: The Conversion of Saint Paul
Artist: Karel Dujardin
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 186.7 x 134.6 cm
Date: 1662
Location: National Gallery, London.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 9 – ST PAUL

Paul the Apostle, also called the Apostle Paul, Saul of Tarsus, and Saint Paul (c. AD 5 – c. AD 67), was one of the most influential early Christian missionaries, with his writings forming a considerable portion of the New Testament. His influence on Christian thinking has been of utmost significance due to his role as a prominent apostle of Christianity during the spreading of the Gospel through early Christian communities across the Roman Empire. Before his conversion, Paul, then known as Saul, was a zealous Pharisee who intensely persecuted the followers of Jesus. The Conversion of Paul the Apostle, as depicted in the Christian Bible, refers to the event in the life of Paul of Tarsus which led him to cease persecuting early Christians and to himself become a follower of Jesus. As described in the Acts of the Apostles 9:3-9 “As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ ‘Who are you, Lord?’ Saul asked. ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied. ‘Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.’ The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.”

The painting is unusual, though by no means unique, as a Dutch painting of the later 17th century representing a dramatic religious theme. Paul is at the lower right. In the sky at the upper left cherubs hold a torch and an olive branch. The composition is based on a print by Antonio Tempesta, whose work was widely circulated in the Netherlands and influenced a number of Dutch artists, among them Rembrandt and Ferdinand Bol. The size of the painting and the fact that its subject is relatively rare in Dutch art of the time suggest that it was specially commissioned. The patron may have been a member of the family of the first recorded owner, Jan François d'Orvielle. There is another work by the artist of similar dimensions showing 'Saint Paul healing the Sick at Lystra' (now Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), which is said to have formerly borne the date 1663.

Karel Dujardin (September 1622 – November 1678) was a Dutch painter and etcher, born in Amsterdam in 1622. Although active as a portrait and history painter, he is best known for his Italianate landscapes with figures and animals featured prominently. The animal paintings of Paulus Potter influenced him, as well as the landscapes of his master, Nicolaes Berchem. Dujardin was the son of a little-known painter, Guilliam du Gardin. According to his biographer Houbraken, he trained with Berchem; he later visited Rome. In the early 1650s he is recorded in Amsterdam and in 1656 in The Hague. By 1659 he had apparently returned to Amsterdam. He visited Italy again in 1675, and he died in Venice three years later.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 8 – ST JAMES THE GREATER

2011-06-26T07:50:00.000-07:00

Title: Apostle James the Greater
Artist: Antonio Veneziano
Medium: Tempera on poplar panel
Size: 51 x 33 cm
Date: c. 1384
Location: Staatliche Museen, Berlin.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 8 – ST JAMES THE GREATER

The Apostle St James the Greater was the son of Zebedee and Salome, and the brother of John the Evangelist. Originally they were fishermen, and fished with their father in the Lake of Genesareth. In the Gospels the two brothers are often called after their father "the sons of Zebedee", and received from Christ the honorable title of Boanerges, "sons of thunder" (Mark 3:17). James the son of Zebedee is styled "the Greater" to distinguish him from the Apostle James "the Less", the son of Alphaeus. The fact that the name of James almost occurs always before that of his brother seems to imply that James was the elder of the two. According to Acts 12:1-2, on the occasion of the Passover of A.D. 44, Herod Agrippa perpetrated cruelties upon the Church, whose rapid growth incensed the Jews: "He killed James, the brother of John, with the sword."

When Venetian artists began to break away from the grip of Byzantium, Antonio Veneziano was among the first to lead the way. He was popular in Siena, Florence, and Pisa, all gave him important commissions. This panel, part of a polyptych and representing St James the Great, shows the artist at his best. The tension of the strongly defined sculptural volume of the figure plays against the flat, linear surface is characteristic of Veneziano’s panels. The saint’s face, too, has flair associated with the artist. The long straight nose with the hint of a bulb at the tip; the sharply defined eye sockets and the hard outline of the eyes; the strongly modeled face; the heavy chin; the lips pressed together dimpled at the corners. All signs of an artist transcending restrictive traditions.

Antonio Veneziano (Antonio the Venetian, c. 1310 – 1384) was an Italian painter who was reported to have been a student of Taddeo Gaddi. He was born apparently in Venice, although it is also supposed that he was born in Florence and acquired the name Veneziano due to a long residence there where he executed several works in the Ducal palace. He was active in Siena, Florence and Pisa, documented between 1369 and 1419, having produced a series of paintings, including frescoes in two chapels, for Siena Cathedral (all untraced). His style was less dry and formal than the generality of many of his contemporaries, and he is said to have carried fresco-painting to a higher degree of perfection than it had attained previous to the period at which he lived.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 7 – ST JOHN THE EVANGELIST

2011-06-25T07:55:00.000-07:00

Title: St John the Evangelist
Artist: El Greco
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 90 x 77 cm
Date: 1595-1604
Location: Museo del Prado, Madrid.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 7 – ST JOHN THE EVANGELIST

The Apostle St John the Evangelist was the son of Zebedee and Salome, and the brother of James the Greater. Originally they were fishermen, and fished with their father in the Lake of Genesareth. In the Gospels the two brothers are often called after their father "the sons of Zebedee", and received from Christ the honorable title of Boanerges, "sons of thunder" (Mark 3:17). John is the presumed author of the fourth gospel and, by tradition, the Beloved Disciple of that book, as well as the author of the Apocalypse, although scholarship does question at least some of these connections. One of the first to be called to follow Christ, he also witnesses with Peter and James the raising of Jairus's daughter (Mark 5:37), the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1), and the Agony in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:37). Only he and Peter were sent into the city to make the preparation for the Last Supper (Luke 22:8).

There is an analogous version of this painting in the Cathedral of Toledo, which is part of a series of the twelve Apostles called Apostolados. It is assumed by some scholars that this painting also belonged to a similar series. The saint’s attributes are a book or scroll, in allusion to his writings, an eagle which may hold a pen or inkhorn in its beak, or, as in this example, a chalice from which a snake emerges. This imagery commemorates the testimony that once, while at Ephesus, John was given a cup of poisoned wine to drink. Before drinking, he blessed the cup and the poison departed the cup in the form of a serpent.

Domenikos Theotokopoulos, known as El Greco (1541 – April 1614) was a painter, sculptor, and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. Today considered one of the greatest artists of the Spanish school, El Greco was born in Crete, a Greek island then under Venetian control. Little is known of his youth, though El Greco's early works demonstrate that he worked within the conservative tradition of Byzantine icon painting before exposure to Venetian High Renaissance art broadened his stylistic approach. His workshop turned out a great many replicas of his paintings, but his work was so personal that his influence was slight, his only followers of note being his son Jorge Manuel Theotokopoulos and Luis Tristan. The strangeness of his art has inspired various theories, for example that he was mad or suffered from astigmatism, but his rapturous paintings make complete sense as an expression of the religious fervor of his adopted country. Interest in his art revived at the end of the 19th century and with the development of Expressionism in the 20th century he came into his own.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 6 – ST CATHERINE OF ALEXANDRIA

2011-06-24T06:20:00.000-07:00

Title: St Catherine of Alexandria
Artist: Raphael
Medium: Oil on wood
Size: 71.1 x 54.6 cm
Date: 1508
Location: National Gallery, London.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 6 – ST CATHERINE OF ALEXANDRIA

Saint Catherine of Alexandria, also known as Saint Catherine of the Wheel and The Great Martyr Saint Catherine, is said to have been a noted scholar in the early 4th century. The Orthodox Church venerates her as a "great martyr", and in the Catholic Church she is traditionally revered as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. Catherine was born in Alexandria and raised a pagan, but converted to Christianity in her late teens. It is said that she visited the Roman Emperor Maximinus Daia, and attempted to convince him of the moral error in persecuting Christians. She succeeded in converting his wife, the Empress, and many pagan philosophers whom the Emperor sent to dispute with her (all of whom were subsequently martyred). Upon the failure of the Emperor to win Catherine over, he ordered her to be put in prison; and when the people who visited her converted, she was condemned to death on the breaking wheel, an instrument of torture. According to legend, the wheel itself broke when she touched it, so she was beheaded.

Painted just before Raphael's move to Rome, St Catherine of Alexandria is portrayed in a marvelous, twisted pose. Her left arm is leaning on a wheel - an allusion to the breaking wheel of her martyrdom - and her right hand is pressed to her breast while she gazes up at a sky flooded with light. The composition is as rich in harmonious movement as the coloration is full and varied. The delicate modeling of the saint, the slight torsion of her body as she leans on the wheel (whose spikes have been reduced to rounded knobs in order to tone down the element of cruelty) fully express the balanced character of Raphael's art.

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (April 1483 – April 1520), better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. Raphael was highly admired by his contemporaries, and in 1508 he was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II, and he was to remain in the city serving successive popes for a dozen years until his death. Raphael died on the 6th of April 1520 (on his 37th birthday) and was buried the next day in the Pantheon. His funeral was very well attended attracting large crowds. Vasari says that Raphael's early death 'plunged into grief the entire papal court', and for centuries he was considered as the greatest painter who expressed the basic doctrines of the Christian Church through figures that have a physical beauty worthy of the antique.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 5 – ST FRANCIS

2011-06-23T06:17:00.000-07:00

Title: Saint Francis (Der heilige Franziskus)
Artist: Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
Medium: Woodcut print
Size: 71 x 55.1 cm
Date: 1919
Location: Various; Publisher Verlag Karl Lang, Darmstadt. Printer Fritz Voigt, Berlin. Edition: 50.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 5 – ST FRANCIS

Saint Francis of Assisi (born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone; c. 1181 – October 1226) was an Italian Catholic friar and preacher. Francis was the son of a wealthy cloth merchant in Assisi, and he lived the high-spirited life typical of a wealthy young man. When about twenty, Francis went out with the townsmen to fight in one of the petty skirmishes so frequent at that time between the rival cities. While going off to war in 1204, he had a vision that directed him back to Assisi, where he lost his taste for his worldly life. On a pilgrimage to Rome, Francis begged with the beggars at St. Peter's. The experience moved him to live in poverty, and when Francis returned home, he began preaching on the streets, and soon amassed a following; his order was endorsed by the Pope in 1210. In 1224, while he was praying on the mountain of Verna during a forty-day fast in preparation for Michaelmas, Francis is said to have had a vision, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, a result of which he received the stigmata. Brother Leo, who had been with Francis at the time, left a clear and simple account of the event, the first definite account of the phenomenon of stigmata: "Suddenly he saw a vision of a seraph, a six-winged angel on a cross. This angel gave him the gift of the five wounds of Christ."

In this portrait of St Francis, Schmidt-Rottluff puts to good use the much harder and more angular style his woodcuts adopted from 1912 through 1920. The agony of the stigmata and the wizened suffering on St Francis’ face are graphically portrayed, his suffering not just spiritual, but physical, like Christ before him. And although the portrait almost becomes a caricature with its use of exprerssionism, it still seems to capture the description of Francis given by one of his first disciples, Thomas of Celano: “...frail in form, Francis had a long yet cheerful face and soft but strong voice, small brilliant black eyes, dark brown hair, and a sparse beard. His person was in no way imposing, yet there was about the saint a delicacy, grace, and distinction which made him most attractive.”

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (December 1884 –August 1976) was a German painter and printmaker. One of the main exponents of Expressionism, he was a founder of Die Brücke and one of its leading members. The gradual dissolution of Die Brücke, as its members moved one by one to Berlin in 1911, led to the group’s demise a few years later. From 1915 to the end of World War I, Schmidt-Rottluff served as a soldier on the eastern front, and these experiences were reflected indirectly in his art. He increasingly turned to introspective themes, as in 9 Holzschnitte (1918), a series of woodcuts based on the life of Christ published by Kurt Wolff Verlag in Munich. At the end of the war he became a member of the Arbeitsrat für kunst in Berlin, which saw itself as an anti-academic movement of German artists at a time of revolution.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS : PART 4 - ST LAWRENCE

2011-06-22T06:12:00.000-07:00

Title: The Martyrdom of St Lawrence
Artist: Palma Giovane
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 283 x 490 cm
Date: 1581-82
Location: San Giacomo dall'Orio, Venice.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 4 – ST LAWRENCE

Lawrence of Rome (c. 225 – 258) (Latin: Laurentius, meaning "laurelled") was one of the seven deacons of ancient Rome who were martyred during the persecution of Valerian in 258. At the beginning of the month of August, 258, the emperor issued an edict, commanding that all bishops, priests, and deacons should immediately be put to death. On 6 August Pope Sixtus II was apprehended in one of the catacombs, and executed forthwith. After the death of Sixtus, the prefect of Rome demanded that Lawrence turn over the riches of the Church. Legend has it that Lawrence asked for three days to gather together the wealth, and then swiftly distributed as much Church property to the poor as possible. On the third day, when ordered to give up the treasures of the Church, he presented the poor, the crippled, the blind and the suffering, and said that these were the true treasures of the Church. He was subsequently martyred. Since the fourth century St. Lawrence has been one of the most honored martyrs of the Roman Church.

This depiction of The Martyrdom of St Lawrence is a rather unusual horizontal design, which has been criticized as being unsuccessful with predictable intermingling of Venetian and Roman mannerism. But the depth of field has been masterfully captured in distinct planes, creating a very naturalistic sense of depth, as does the light from the flames beneath the Saint’s gridiron. Tradition also holds that Lawrence joked about their cooking him enough to eat while he was burning on the gridiron (hence his patronage of cooks and chefs), stating something along the lines of "turn me over ... I'm done on this side."

Jacopo di Antonio Negretti (c.1548 - October 1628), best known as Jacopo Palma il Giovane or simply Palma Giovane ("Young Palma") was a Venetian painter, and great-nephew of Palma Vecchio. He is said to have been a pupil of Titian, but this tradition has been doubted (it is probably based on the fact that he completed the Pietà which Titian left incomplete at his death). In the late 1560s and early 1570s he worked in central Italy, mainly Rome, but thereafter he spent the rest of his life in Venice. Adding naturalism to his Mannerist style by the 1580s, he varied the ingeniously synthesized amalgam according to subject matter and patrons' own eclectic and conservative tastes, with "virtuoso skill and a facile intelligence." After the death of Tintoretto in 1594, he became the leading painter in the Venice.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 3 – ST MATTHEW

2011-06-21T06:30:00.000-07:00

Title: St Matthew and the Angel
Artist: Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 93 x 125 cm
Date: c. 1534
Location: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 3 – ST MATTHEW

St. Matthew, the son of Alpheus (Mark 2:14) was a Galilean, and a tax-gatherer at Capharnaum. He collected custom duties for Herod Antipas, and, although a Jew, was despised by the Pharisees, who hated all publicans. When summoned by Jesus, Matthew followed Him and tendered Him a feast in his house, where tax-gatherers and sinners sat at table with Christ and His disciples. This drew a protest from the Pharisees whom Jesus rebuked in these consoling words: "I came not to call the just, but sinners". No further allusion is made to Matthew in the Gospels, except in the list of the Apostles. As a disciple and Apostle he therefore would have followed Christ, accompanying Him up to the time of His Passion and, and was one of the witnesses of His Resurrection and Ascension. Of Matthew's subsequent career we have only inaccurate or legendary data. St. Irenæus tells us that Matthew preached the Gospel among the Hebrews, St. Clement of Alexandria claiming that he did this for fifteen years before going into Gentile nations.

In the St Matthew and the Angel, an angel appears in the darkness to inspire the seated evangelist. Strangely distorting light and shadows play across their drapery and faces, the result of illumination from a small oil lamp placed like a footlight on the table below and in front of them. In the dark recesses at the right two men attend to a seated figure. Flames and sparks from the fireplace throw the three figures into relief, catching St Matthew's hands and face with their light, but consigning the rest of his body to near total darkness. At the far left four small figures wander along a moonlit street. Matthew's peasant's hands, rumpled clothes, contorted neck, and slightly scruffy beard all contribute to the immediacy of the scene, so convincingly real as to be unsettling.

Girolamo Savoldo, also called Girolamo da Brescia (c. 1480 – after 1548) was an Italian High Renaissance painter. Active mainly in Venice, his output was small and his career is said to have been unsuccessful, but he is now remembered as a highly attractive minor master whose work stands somewhat apart from the main Venetian tradition. He carefully studied the effects of light and reflections in a way that was most unusual for the time, and had links to the current of realism and acute psychological portrayal. The exact date of Savoldo's death is not known: in 1548 he was cited as still living in Venice, though vecchione ("Very old").

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 2 – ST MARY MAGDALENE

2011-06-20T06:43:00.000-07:00

Title: Mary Magdalen Raised by Angels
Artist: Giovanni Lanfranco
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 109 x 78 cm
Date: c. 1616
Location: Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 2 - ST MARY MAGDALENE

Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus' most celebrated disciples. In the New Testament she is mentioned among the women who accompanied and ministered to Christ (Luke 8:2-3), where it is also said that seven devils had been cast out of her (Mark 16:9). She is next named as standing at the foot of the cross (Mark 15:40; Matthew 27:56; John 19:25; Luke 23:49). She saw Christ laid in the tomb, and she was the first recorded witness of the Resurrection. She is referred to in early Christian writings as "the apostle to the apostles", and in apocryphal texts she is portrayed as a visionary and leader of the early movement. Several Gnostic gospels, such as the Gospel of Mary, written in the early 2nd century, see Mary as the special disciple of Jesus who has a deeper understanding of his teachings and is asked to impart this to the other disciples.

Giovanni Lanfranco, as a pupil of Annibale Carracci, was asked to provide decorations for a palazzetto behind Palazzo Farnese. In keeping with the character of the building, a casino in a garden, they represented mythological episodes. A few years later, Cardinal Odoardo Farnese added a small room to the Palazzetto Farnese as a Christian retreat, and Lanfranco was responsible for its entire decoration. This work consisted of four large frescoes, and nine ceiling panels, only two of which survived. One of the surviving works, Mary Magdalen Raised by Angels, takes it’s cue from the French tradition where it is said Magdalene retired to a hill, La Sainte-Baume, and at the time of her death was carried by angels into the oratory of St. Maximinus, where she received the viaticum.

Giovanni Lanfranco (January 1582 - November 1647) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period. His talent for drawing allowed him to begin an apprenticeship with the Bolognese artist Agostino Carracci, brother of Annibale Carracci, working alongside fellow Parmese Sisto Badalocchio in the local Farnese palaces. When Agostino died in 1602, both young artists moved to Annibale's large and prominent Roman workshop. Lanfranco painted many religious decorations for churches and palaces in Rome. Lanfranco explored new styles, bridged traditions, painted in both mannerist and baroque styles, using a tenebrist and a vivid colorist palette. He died in Rome in 1647, where his last work was apse of San Carlo ai Catinari.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 1 – ST JOSEPH

2011-06-19T08:21:00.000-07:00

Title: St Joseph and the Infant Christ
Artist: Giovanni Battista Gaulli
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 127 x 97.2 cm
Date: c. 1670-85
Location: Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena.

TWENTY SAINTS IN TWENTY DAYS: PART 1 – ST JOSEPH

St. Joseph, also known as Joseph of the House of David, Joseph the Betrothed, or Joseph the Worker is the husband of the Virgin Mary, the foster father of Jesus, and head of the Holy Family. Joseph is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran churches. The gospels describe Joseph as a "tekton" (τεκτων); traditionally the word has been taken to mean "carpenter", though the Greek term is much less specific. It cannot be translated narrowly; it evokes an artisan with wood in general, or an artisan in iron or stone. Very little other information on Joseph is given in the Gospels, but the little there is describes well enough who he was: "a righteous man" (Matthew 1:18). St. Joseph, as patron Saint of fathers, serves as an example about the importance of commitment to marriage, the family, and the importance of living an unstained moral life.

This intimate painting, with St. Joseph cradling the Christ child while bathed in a gentle light from above, provides a characteristic example of Baciccio's style of easel painting, which is vigorously Baroque in design and conception. The dynamic folds of drapery which envelop the figures are profoundly sculptural, and Baciccio's native Genoese traditions are evident in the dark background, the use of highly saturated, warm colors and the broad, painterly handling.

Giovanni Battista Gaulli (May, 1639 – April, 1709), also known as Baciccio, Il Baciccio or Baciccia (all Genoese nicknames for Giovanni Battista), was a painter of the Italian High Baroque verging onto that of the Rococo. Gaulli was born in Genoa, his Genoa a cosmopolitan Italian artistic center open to both commercial and artistic enterprises from north European countries, including countries with non-Catholic populations such as England and the Dutch provinces. He soon, however, moved to Rome. In 1662, he was accepted into the Roman artists' guild, the Accademia di San Luca (Academy of Saint Luke), where he was to later hold several offices. At his height, Gaulli was one of Rome's most esteemed portrait painters, though he is best known for his grand, Gianlorenzo Bernini-influenced illusionistic vault fresco in the church of the Gesù in Rome.

Christ's Charge to Peter

2011-04-11T20:56:00.000-07:00

Title: Christ's Charge to Peter
Artist: Raphael
Medium: Bodycolor on paper on canvas
Size: 340 × 530 cm
Date: 1516
Location: Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

John 21:15-25 When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep. “The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!” Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”) When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” Because of this, the rumor spread among the believers that this disciple would not die. But Jesus did not say that he would not die; he only said, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?” This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.

Pope Leo X commissioned a set of tapestry designs, or cartoons, from Raphael in 1515. The ten cartoons depicted episodes from the lives of Saints Peter and Paul. Raphael here combines the two New Testament passages on which the catholic church bases its authority, that of Matthew 16:18-19 and this passage in John where Jesus orders Peter three times to feed the sheep - making it obvious that he actually charges Peter to take care of the believers. The tapestry was made in the workshop of the weaver Pieter van Aelst and is now in the Vatican Museums. Although Raphael's cartoons have been prized since the eighteenth century as independent works of art, in their own time they were seen as a stepping stone in the creation of the final object - the tapestry.

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (1483 – April 1520), better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his paintings and drawings. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. Raphael was highly admired by his contemporaries, although his influence on artistic style in his own century was less than that of Michelangelo. Mannerism, beginning at the time of his death, and later the Baroque, took art in a direction totally opposed to Raphael's qualities; "with Raphael's death, classic art - the High Renaissance - subsided", as Walter Friedländer put it. However, he was soon seen as the ideal model by those disliking the excesses of Mannerism.

Jesus Appeared To His Disciples By The Sea Of Galilee

2011-04-10T21:45:00.000-07:00

Title: Jesus Appeared To His Disciples By The Sea Of Galilee
Artist: Alexandre Bida
Medium: Etching
Size: 28 x 21 cm
Date: 1873
Location: From Illustrations by Alexandre Bida, from Christ in Art; or, The Gospel Life of Jesus: With the Bida Illustrations. by Edward Eggleston. New York: Fords, Howard, & Hulbert, 1874.

John 21:1-14 Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Galilee. It happened this way: Simon Peter, Thomas (also known as Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. “I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. “Friends, haven’t you any fish?” He called out to them. “No,” they answered. He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish. Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, “It is the Lord,” he wrapped his outer garment around him (for he had taken it off) and jumped into the water. The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, for they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards. When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” So Simon Peter climbed back into the boat and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.

We now know that the Gospel of Mark ended at 16:8... or do we? There are scholars who state that the ending of Mark can be found in John 21. John 21 has synoptic affinities which do not appear in John 1-20: the sons of Zebedee appear, the disciples are fishing, 28 words in John 21 do not appear elsewhere in John, but only in the synoptics. Further, Mark 14:27-28, 16:7 states that Jesus will reappear in Galilee. There are other clues that Mark foreshadows John 21. The disciples will be unaware of the empty tomb, because the women told no-one of what they saw (Mark 16:8). Accordingly, in John 21, Peter and other disciples have lost hope and returned to the lake; for having witnessed the risen Christ before, they now fail to realize Jesus is present in 21:4. The whole story is more like a first appearance to the disciples than a "third".

Alexandre Bida (1813–1895) was born in Toulouse, France and was a painter of the Romantic period. During Bida's youth, he traveled and worked in Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, and Palestine. He specialized in Orientalism and studied under Eugène Delacroix, but with an artist's eye for precision and perfection, he soon developed his own style. He was also an illustrator of the Holy Bible. As a Bible illustrator, Bida's Les Saints Evangeles was published in 1873. In it, the four gospels were enriched by his twenty-eight etchings. Of Bida's work, it was said that he brought a truth and genius that made his Christ reverent, refined, dignified, and strong.

Doubting Thomas

2011-04-09T06:13:00.000-07:00

Title: Doubting Thomas
Artist: Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn
Medium: Oil on panel
Size: 53 × 51 cm
Date: 1634
Location: Pushkin Museum, Moscow.

John 20:24-31 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

Rembrandt depicts the well-known scene somewhat theatrical. By showing his wounds, Jesus takes away Thomas's incredulity. Contrary to most other depictions, Thomas does not stick his hand into the wound. His doubts vanish when he sees the wound, just as John describes it in his gospel. John himself is depicted on the right. He appears to be sleeping, but that should be regarded as having deep inner thoughts.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (July 1606 – October 1669) was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history. Born in Leiden into a middle class family, Rembrandt becomes a pupil of the painter Jacob van Swanenburgh. In 1624, he studies in Amsterdam in the studio of Pieter Lastman, who will greatly influence his artistic development. Some say it is Lastman who illustrates to Rembrandt Caravaggio's use of chiaroscuro – the application of light and darkness to suggest depth.

Christ Appearing to His Disciples After the Resurrection

2011-04-08T06:06:00.000-07:00

Title: Christ Appearing to His Disciples After the Resurrection
Artist: William Blake
Medium: Color print (monotype), hand-colored with watercolor and tempera
Size: 43.2 x 57.5 cm
Date: c. 1795
Location: National Gallery of Art, Washington.

John 20:19-23 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven”.

In visual terms, this work tells us about the things that influenced Blake as an artist. The sinuous curves that roll over the backs of the disciples recall similar effects in Gothic art (which Blake had studied during his apprenticeship). However, Blake’s typically muscular figures demonstrate other inspirations at play, owing much to the Renaissance master Michelangelo. Here, the body of Christ is firmed up and thickened, backing up Blake’s belief in the resurrection. Although the stigmata and signs of physical suffering are showing, the muscled shoulders, defined thighs and solid arms add visual weight and vital credence to this cornerstone of Blake’s faith. This image does exude a sense of intimacy, with the huddle of heads, grinding and groveling (some are even flush to the floor), an odd (and totally engaging) backdrop. The syrupy glow that emanates from Jesus sets a definitive mood too. The warm flesh tones on the exposed bits of body flush fierce focus-on-the-physical into the picture. And Christ’s (just) larger than normal eyes could make someone look at this with new eyes.

William Blake (November 1757 – August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Blake is considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. In 1788 Blake developed a process of etching in relief that enabled him to combine illustrations and text on the same page and to print them himself, thus ensuring complete independence of thought and expression. Four illuminated books appeared between 1789 and 1794. Many of his large independent color prints, or monotypes, were done in 1795. His work was largely neglected for a generation after his death and was almost forgotten when Alexander Gilchrist began work on his biography in the 1860s. It was in the twentieth century, however, that Blake's work was fully appreciated and his influence increased.

Saint Mary Magdalene

2011-04-07T06:29:00.000-07:00

Title: Saint Mary Magdalene
Artist: Guido Reni
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 79.3 x 68.5 cm
Date: c. 1634
Location: National Gallery, London.

John 20:18 Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.

Mary Magdalene or Mary of Magdala (original Greek Μαρία ἡ Μαγδαληνή, 1st century AD) was one of Jesus' most celebrated disciples. Mary Magdalene is the only person named by any of the canonical gospels as a witness to all three: Jesus' crucifixion, his burial, and the discovery of his empty tomb. Mary Magdalene is mentioned, along with various other women, as a witness to the crucifixion in Mark 15:40, Matthew 27:56 and John 19:25; in listing witnesses who saw where Jesus was buried by Joseph of Aramathea, Mark 15:47 and Matthew 27:61; and in Mark, Matthew, and John, Mary Magdalene is first witness to the Resurrection. New Testament scholar Frank Stagg points out that Mary's role as a witness is unusual because women at that time were not considered credible witnesses in legal proceedings. Because of this, and because of extra-biblical traditions about her subsequent missionary activity in spreading the Gospel, she is known by the title, "Equal of the Apostles".

Guido Reni (November 1575 – August 1642) was an Italian painter of high-Baroque style. As a child of nine, he was apprenticed under the Bolognese studio of Denis Calvaert. When Reni was about twenty years old, three Calvaert pupils migrated to the rising rival studio, named Accademia degli Incamminati (Academy of the "newly embarked", or progressives), led by Lodovico Carracci. They went on to form the nucleus of a prolific and successful school of Bolognese painters who followed Annibale Carracci to Rome. Many of his best known works were painted there, including the ceiling fresco, 'Aurora' (Casino Rospigliosi), carried out before 1614 for Cardinale Scipione Borghese. By 1613 Reni had returned to Bologna, and was largely active there until his death.

Noli Me Tangere

2011-04-06T06:09:00.000-07:00

Title: Noli Me Tangere
Artist: Correggio
Medium: Oil on panel transferred to canvas
Size: 130 x 103 cm
Date: c. 1525
Location: Museo del Prado, Madrid.

John 20:15-17 He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”). Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

Jesus calls her by the name he used for her before, and she responds with ‘Rabboni’, the title she used before. She would naturally assume that their relationship could pick up where it left off and continue on as before. Jesus' response, however, lets her know there has been a radical change in him and consequently in his relationship with his followers. This change is indicated when Jesus tells her not to touch him. The use of the present tense (haptou) suggests in this context that he is not forbidding her to touch him but telling her to stop that which she is already doing.

Antonio Allegri da Correggio (August 1489 – March 1534), usually known as Correggio, was the foremost painter of the Parma school of the Italian Renaissance. Untempted by Rome, Florence or Venice, Correggio, working in the North Italian city of Parma, maintained his originality throughout the High Renaissance and became one of the most important influences on seventeenth-century Baroque painting. Little is known about Correggio's life or training. He appears to have emerged out of no major apprenticeship, and to have had little immediate influence in terms of apprenticed successors, but his works are now considered to have been revolutionary and influential on subsequent artists.

The Morning of the Resurrection

2011-04-05T06:41:00.000-07:00

Title: The Morning of the Resurrection
Artist: Edward Coley Burne-Jones
Medium: Oil on wood
Size: 84.5 x 151.1 cm
Date: 1886
Location: Tate Britain, London.

John 20:11-14 Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” She said, “They have taken my Lord away, and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

Burrne-Jones began this painting in 1882, but did not complete it until four years later, when it was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery. After the death of the Hon. Laura Lyttleton (nee Tennant), a young friend of whom the artist was particularly fond, Burne-Jones inscribed a personal memorial or 'oblation' in the lower left-hand corner. He made at least two other versions of the subject. The painting falls at the end of Burne-Jones' Mantegnesque phase, and the regular horizontals and verticals and color strengthen the sad mood. According to de Lisle the angels are making the ancient sign of adoration, of covering the mouth.

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet (August 1833 – June 1898) was an English artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company. Burne-Jones was closely involved in the rejuvenation of the tradition of stained glass art in England. On 16 June 1933, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, a nephew of Burne-Jones, officially opened a centenary exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London. But in fact, long before 1933, Burne-Jones was hopelessly out-of-fashion in the art world, much of which soon preferred the major trends in Modern art, and the exhibit marking the 100th anniversary of his birth was a sad affair, poorly attended. It was not until the mid-1970s that his work began to be re-assessed and once again acclaimed. A major exhibit in 1989 at the Barbican Art Gallery, London traced Burne-Jones's influence on the next generation of artists, and another at Tate Britain in 1997 explored the links between British Aestheticism and Symbolism.

Two Disciples at the Tomb

2011-04-04T06:01:00.000-07:00

Title: Two Disciples at the Tomb
Artist: Henry Ossawa Tanner
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 129.5 x 105.7 cm
Date: c. 1906
Location: The Art Institute of Chicago.

John 20:2-10 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.

In this painting, John’s youthful face reflects the emptiness of the arched tomb. Next to him, bowing his head in awe, stands the bearded disciple Peter, who will later become the leader of the Christian church. The sense of spirituality is emphasized by the light radiating from the tomb. Although Tanner depicted a wide range of subjects he considered himself primarily a painter of religious subjects. “Two Disciples at the Tomb” became one of Tanner’s most well-known religious paintings in America, giving him at long last the kind of recognition that he had received abroad. Called "the most impressive and distinguished work of the season" in 1906, the painting competed against 350 other works to win the Harris Silver Medal at The Art Institute of Chicago. The museum purchased the painting later that year.

Henry Ossawa Tanner (June 1859 – May 1937) was an African American artist who earned international acclaim for his religious paintings. His father was a prominent minister and his mother a former slave who escaped the South through the Underground Railroad. At age eleven, Tanner decided to become an artist, and nine years later the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts accepted him, the only African American out of two hundred students. Throughout his life Tanner kept close ties with his native country and was proud of his contributions as a black American, but chose to live in France, where he felt that his race mattered less to other artists and critics. His painting “Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City” hangs in the Green Room at the White House, the first painting by an African-American artist to enter the permanent collection of the White House.

Resurrection Morning Maria Magdalina

2011-04-03T09:42:00.000-07:00

Title: Resurrection Morning Maria Magdalina
Artist: Julia Bekhova
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 80 x 65 cm
Date: 1997
Location: Private collection

John 20:1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.

An interesting divergence between the Synoptic Gospels and that of John, is that in the latter it is Mary Magdalene alone who first attended the tomb. John's Gospel gives Mary Magdalene the greatest prominence in the Resurrection narrative, but why she is singled out, rather than attending with the other women, is a matter of some speculation. John does not tell us why Magdalene went, whereas the other gospels say that the women went to anoint the body. Primarily, it would seem, she went to the tomb to mourn just as we would go to the grave of a loved one.

Julia Bekhova (b. 1964) is a contemporary Russian painter. In 1995 she graduated from the Repin Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in St Petersburg, having studied monumental painting under Professor A. A. Mylnikov. In 1999 she took part in mural works in renovated cathedral of the Christ Rescuer, and between 2001 and 2003 she also assisted with mural works at the city cathedral in Kursk. Since 2000 she has been teaching at the department of painting at the Repin Institute, and participated in various international art shows in such diverse cities as London, Hamburg and Beijing, China. More of her work can be seen here: http://academart.com/bekhova_imaginary_paintings.php

Entombment of Christ

2011-04-02T07:01:00.000-07:00

Title: Entombment of Christ
Artist: Rogier van der Weyden
Medium: Oil on oak panel
Size: 110 x 96 cm
Date: 1450
Location: Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

John 19:41-42 At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

This painting, in a Renaissance frame decorated with pilasters, adorned the altar of the private chapel of the Medici villa in Careggi, near Florence, and there are good reasons to suppose that the Medici family commissioned it. The work closely follows the Entombment of Christ by Fra Angelico, painted around 1440 for the Florentine monastery church of San Marco. Its influence is evident in the display of the dead Christ, shown almost standing, with Mary and John holding his arms one on each side, and more particularly in the hill with the tomb in the rock, which runs entirely counter to Northern European tradition. Clear guidelines from his patrons would also explain why the painting was executed in almost square format, unusual for Netherlandish works but common in Italy and suitable for the architectural Renaissance setting. The patrons who commissioned the work would have been struck by the fine, realistic detail of the painting and the intense emotion of the faces. These qualities, and the slight asymmetry that suited late Gothic taste, distinguish the picture in significant respects from the work of Fra Angelico.

Rogier van der Weyden or Rogier de le Pasture (c. 1399 – June 1464) was an early Netherlandish painter. His surviving works consist mainly of religious triptychs, altarpieces and commissioned single and diptych portraits. Little is known about Rogier's training as a painter. The archival sources from Tournai were completely destroyed during World War II, but had been partly transcribed in the 19th and early 20th century. The sources on his early life are confusing and have led to different interpretations by scholars. His vigorous, subtle, expressive painting and popular religious conceptions had considerable influence on European painting, not only in France and Germany but also in Italy and in Spain. Van der Weyden had also a large influence on the German painter and engraver Martin Schongauer whose prints were distributed all over Europe from the last decades of the 15th century. Indirectly Schongauer's prints helped to disseminate Van der Weyden's style. As can be seen in existing paintings attributed to him, Rogier van der Weyden was a master in the depiction of emotions and grief.

Descent from the Cross

2011-04-01T07:04:00.000-07:00

Title: Descent from the Cross
Artist: Peter Paul Rubens
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 297 x 200 cm
Date: 1617-18
Location: The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

John 19:38-40 Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs.

John's account of the burial may continue to develop the theme of Jesus' royal identity. The large amount of spice used obviously expresses their love for Jesus, and such excessive amounts of spice were a feature of at least some royal funerals. Plenty of people besides kings had extravagant funerals and were buried in garden tombs, but given all the emphasis in the Passion account on Jesus as king, such details seem to continue this theme here at the burial.

Sir Peter Paul Rubens (June 1577 – May 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish painter, and a proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. Rubens was one of the most methodically assimilative and most prodigiously productive of Western artists. His abundant energy fired him to study and emulate the masters both of antiquity and of the 16th century in Rome, Venice, and Parma. His warmth of nature made him responsive to the artistic revolutions being worked by living artists, and robust powers of comprehension nourished his limitless resource in invention. He was able to infuse his own astounding vitality equally into religious and mythological paintings, portraits, and landscapes. He organized his complex compositions in vivid, dynamic designs in which limitations of form and contour are discounted in favor of a constant flow of movement. Rubens's major business was altarpieces, particularly suitable for an artist who enjoyed working on a grand scale.

Christ on the Cross

2011-03-31T06:37:00.000-07:00

Title: Christ on the Cross
Artist: Eugène Delacroix
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 73.5 x 59.7 cm
Date: 1853
Location: The National Gallery, London.

John 19:31-37 Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jewish leaders did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe. These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken,” and, as another scripture says, “They will look on the one they have pierced.”

Although not a practicing Christian, Delacroix painted a number of New Testament subjects. Evidently, he was attracted to the drama of Christ's Passion and was endeavoring to deal with issues of personal faith raised by Christ's human and divine nature. Delacroix painted this subject several times throughout his career. One version showing Christ between the two thieves was exhibited at the Salon of 1835 (Musée Municipal des Beaux-Arts, Vanne). Another version of 1846, closely related to this painting, was shown at the Salon of 1847 and is now in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore.

Eugène Delacroix (April 1798 – August 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school. Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of color profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. Renoir and Manet made copies of his paintings, and Degas purchased the portrait of Baron Schwiter for his private collection. Delacroix was trained by the Neo-classical painter Pierre Guérin, from 1816 to about 1823. In style his work shows the influence of painters he had studied, notably Rubens. He was an admirer of English painting, and visited England in 1825. In 1832 he travelled to Spain, Morocco and Algiers. After the Revolution of 1830 he was favored by Louis-Philippe, and later by Napoleon III, with a long series of official commissions, beginning in 1833 with a series of decorations in the Palais Bourbon.

Christ on the Cross

2011-03-30T07:05:00.000-07:00

Title: Christ on the Cross
Artist: Francisco de Zurbarán
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 106 x 110.2 cm
Date: 1627
Location: Art Institute, Chicago.

John 19:28-30 Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

On one level the idea of thirst also has spiritual significance. Earlier Jesus had said, "My food . . . is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work" (4:34). And when he was arrested he told Peter to put his sword away, saying, "Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?" (18:11). Hunger and thirst become images for Jesus' desire to fulfill the Father's will to the end. Since the cup represents wrath and suffering, Jesus' taking of this drink may suggest the completion of that experience, as the Lamb of God now takes away the sin of the world. The work he has come to do is now complete. The great significance John attaches to the saying would symbolize both Jesus' commitment to obey God's will and the fulfillment of the suffering of the one who is the righteous sufferer.

Francisco de Zurbarán (November 1598 – August 1664) was a Spanish painter known primarily for his religious paintings depicting monks, nuns, and martyrs. Zurbarán gained the nickname Spanish Caravaggio, owing to the forceful, realistic use of chiaroscuro in which he excelled. His subjects were mostly severe and ascetic religious vigils, the spirit chastising the flesh into subjection, the compositions often reduced to a single figure. In 1627, while still resident in Llerena, Zurbarán painted this spectacular picture, that made him famous, for the Dominicans. It was placed in a small oratory chapel and made a strong impression. The represented drama in the composition is increased by the overpowering light, which heightens then transforms the real into superreal, thus expressing the dual nature of Christ.

Golgotha

2011-03-29T06:05:00.000-07:00

Title: Golgotha
Artist: Franz von Stuck
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 106 x 110.2 cm
Date: 1917
Location: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn.

John 19:25-27 Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.

One of Germany’s leading Symbolists, Stuck frequently painted biblical or mythological subjects that addressed dark themes such as sin and death. Particularly interested in the narrative and details of the Crucifixion, Stuck devoted several canvases to this subject late in his career, during the difficult years of World War I. Calling on new scholarly theories regarding the Gospel accounts, Stuck departs from tradition and places Christ at eye level with the witnesses to his sufferings. The artist cleverly structures his composition, placing the viewer immediately to the left of the crucified thief in the foreground and to the right of the haloed Virgin Mary, thereby closing a solemn yet intimate circle. Stuck also chooses to show Christ with his feet side by side rather than overlapping—again, referencing nineteenth-century debates about the historical details of this method of execution.

Franz Von Stuck (February, 1863 - August 30, 1928) was a German painter, sculptor, engraver and architect. He at first earned his living by illustrating various magazines, and in 1892 was one of the founders of the Munich Sezession. In 1895 he began teaching at the Munich Academy, where his pupils included Kandinsky, Klee and Albers, whose subsequent careers enhanced von Stuck's fame. His many nudes, with their torrid sensuality and a linear style combining decorative and erotic elements, are direct precursors of Jugendstil, the German Art Nouveau movement.

The Crucifixion

2011-03-28T06:34:00.000-07:00

Title: The Crucifixion
Artist: Frank Mason
Medium: Oil on panel
Size: 86.36 x 60.96 cm
Date: 1998
Location: Private collection.

John 19:23-24 When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. “Let’s not tear it,” they said to one another. “Let’s decide by lot who will get it.” This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled that said, “They divided my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.” So this is what the soldiers did.

The significance of the garment's being seamless is that the soldiers are led to draw of lots for it, which in turn echoes Psalm 22:18 – “They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment”. This is the first of four Old Testament passages cited as being fulfilled in Jesus' Passion, all of which refer to particular details of what takes place. John marshals these texts around this most central, and most scandalous, event in order to show that the death of God's Son was in fact the will of God the Father. Behind the idea of fulfillment is the notion of God's sovereign control, which weaves repeating patterns: Scripture expresses God's will, and Jesus is submissive to God's will, so his activity fulfills the Scripture because it flows from the same source and is controlled by the same Father.

Frank Herbert Mason (February 1921- June 2009) was an American painter and teacher born in Cleveland, Ohio. He attended the Music and Arts High School in New York until he was awarded a scholarship to study at the Art Students League of New York with Frank DuMond. Mason studied with Dumond until DuMond's death in 1951, when he himself began teaching at the Art Students League. Mason takes his place in a long line of Old Masters who have interpreted the New Testament, and, like them, he has succeeded in infusing the dignity of his craft and the expression of faith.

The Crucifixion of Christ

2011-03-27T10:48:00.000-07:00

Title: The Crucifixion of Christ
Artist: Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 341 x 371 cm
Date: 1568
Location: San Cassiano, Venice.

John 19:19-22 Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS. Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.” Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”

Common practice was to have those sentenced to crucifixion carry signs indicating the cause of their punishment, or to have others carry the signs for the accused. The title Pilate has written continues to goad the Jewish leaders, and they insist that he change it. But for the first time he stands firm against them, and John seems to suggest this title over the cross was itself a form of witness to Israel and the world. Pilate unwittingly made such a proclamation, of course, as was the case with his having chosen the title itself. Such features fit with John's theme that all is working out according to God's will. So here we have another irony: the man who does not have a clue about the truth proclaims, unwittingly, the truth about Jesus. And we have the tragedy of the representatives of the one true God, who should have recognized the truth, continuing to reject it.

Tintoretto (September, 1518 – May, 1594) also known as Jacopo Robusti or Jacopo Comin, was an Italian painter and a notable exponent of the Venetian Renaissance school. His father, Giovanni, was a dyer, or tintore; hence the son got the nickname of Tintoretto, little dyer, or dyer's boy. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed Il Furioso. Indeed, fellow Venetian master Sebastiano del Piombo remarked that Tintoretto could paint in two days as much as himself in two years. Like Titian, Tintoretto kept a huge workshop, his chief assistants being his sons Domenico and Marco, and his daughter Marietta. Domenico became his foreman and is said to have painted many portraits, although none can be attributed to him with certainty.

Calvary

2011-03-26T09:39:00.000-07:00

Title: Calvary
Artist: Nikolai Ge
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 278 x 223 cm
Date: 1892
Location: Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

John 19:18 There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.

Ge reworked this canvas several times, as evidenced by the figure of the Roman centurion looming up unfinished, or partly repainted, in the background. He tried by formal means to translate the moral torment and suffering by accentuating the expressiveness of the faces, and refusing the academic vision of an ideal, inhuman body, unaltered by the Passion. The dramatic lighting intensifies the violent emotion that he wanted to trigger in the spectator. The work was considered shocking and near-blasphemous, and Tsar Alexander ordered it to be withdrawn from the 22nd exhibition of the Itinerants where it was shown for the first time.

Nikolai Nikolayevich Ge (February 1831 –June 1894), a Russian artist, was born into a noble family of French origin. His parents died when he was young and he was raised by his serf nurse, who taught him compassion for the humiliated and a keen sense of other people’s sorrows. Ge entered the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1850, graduating in 1857 with a Major Gold Medal for his picture The Witch of Endor Calling up the Spirit of the Prophet Samuel. He traveled extensively over the next dozen years, finally settling in St. Petersburg in 1870 where he became one of the founders of the Peredvizhniki, the Society of Traveling Art Exhibitions. He was not a practicing Orthodox, but was deeply influenced by morality and Christian spirituality. He spent the last years of his life working on a cycle of paintings of the Passion of Christ, under the influence of the progressive writer Leo Tolstoy.

Christ Carrying the Cross

2011-03-25T06:25:00.000-07:00

Title: Christ Carrying the Cross
Artist: Luis de Morales
Medium: Oil on wood
Size: tbd.
Date: 1566
Location: Museo del Pariarca, Valencia

John 19:17 Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha).

It is not known why the place was called Skull (calvaria in Latin, hence the name Calvary), but the fact that Joseph had a tomb close by suggests this was not a place of public execution. The notion that the landscape had the appearance of a skull is possible, as evidenced by the hill near Gordon's Calvary today, though the shape of this particular hill is more recent than the first century.

Luis de Morales (c. 1520, Badajoz - 1586, Badajoz) was a Spanish painter. He worked for most of his life in Badajoz, a town on the Portuguese border, and his style, formed away from the influence of the court or great religious and artistic centres such as Seville, is highly distinctive. His pictures are usually fairly small and he concentrated on devotional images. He painted numerous versions of the Virgin and Child, and touching visions inspired by the theme of the Pieta, which are among his most popular works. The piety of his work has earned him the nickname 'El Divino'. This painting was inspired by a painting of the same subject by Sebastiano del Piombo.

Crucify Him!

2011-03-24T07:12:00.000-07:00

Title: Crucify Him!
Artist: Ivan Glazunov
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: tbd.
Date: 1994
Location: tbd.

John 19:12-16 From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jewish leaders kept shouting, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.” When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha). It was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was about noon. “Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews. But they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!” Pilate asked, “Shall I crucify your king?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar” Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. So the soldiers took charge of Jesus.

Jesus has just borne witness to the truth about himself, his Father, Pilate and the opponents. He has made Pilate even more uncomfortable, so Pilate begins to make further efforts to release him. The Jewish leaders counter these efforts with a decisive move--they bring in the issue of Pilate's loyalty to Caesar. It is, of course, highly ironic that Pilate's loyalty to Caesar should be threatened by Jews, members of the most disloyal and unruly section of the empire. Pilate is being humiliated by them. He knows he must give in to their wishes, but he is wily enough to humiliate them also in the process. Upon hearing their threat, he brings Jesus out and sits on the judge's seat (bema) to pass judgment. Such a choice between Jesus and other ultimate concerns in our lives faces each of us, for Jesus really is King and insists on complete loyalty as strongly as Tiberius. Pilate is faced with a choice of kings, and he does not choose wisely.

Ivan Glazunov (b. 1969) is a contemporary Russian painter. He is the son of noted Russian painter and teacher Ilya Glazunov, and has carried on his fathers traditions becoming a full professor at the Russian Academy of Painting and Architecture. He is regarded as a leader of the new generation of the artists of Russian realism, the continuer of the traditions of Old-Russian painting, religious and historical. Among his may prestigious projects was his participation in the restoration of the large Kremlin palace. In the antechamber, that adjoins the Aleksandrovsk and Andreev's halls of the Kremlin, Glazunov created the brilliant gallery of the portraits of Russian tsars, who created the Russian state. More of his work in various genres can be seen on his website http://ivanglazunov.ru/gallery .

Ecce Homo

2011-03-23T19:04:00.000-07:00

Title: Ecce Homo
Artist: Domenico Feti
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 137 x 113 cm
Date: 1605
Location: Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

John 19:4-11 Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews gathered there, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.” When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!” As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!” But Pilate answered, “You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.” The Jewish leaders insisted, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.” When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, and he went back inside the palace. “Where do you come from?” he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer. “Do you refuse to speak to me?” Pilate said. “Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?” Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.”

Often in this Gospel we see people who are mistaken about Jesus and his teaching because they are viewing reality solely in this-worldly categories, for example, the woman of Samaria (chap. 4). Jesus has used their misunderstandings to help these people come to a better view of reality, and that is what he now does with Pilate also: You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Pilate well understands that his power is dependent on the one who is over him, the emperor. He could understand Jesus to be saying nothing more than this. But now that Pilate realizes Jesus is claiming to be a son of God he has a chance to interpret Jesus correctly, to understand that God is the source of this power. Indeed, Jesus' reference to from above gives Pilate a hint as to the answer to his question of where Jesus is from. Thus this is a saying that tests Pilate's heart. Will he hear it correctly?

Domenico Fetti (also spelled Feti) (c. 1589 – 1623) was an Italian Baroque painter born in Rome. He studied under Ludovico Cigoli, was court painter to Vincenzo Gonzaga at Mantua from 1613 to 1622, and then settled in Venice. Working in the out-of-the-way location of Mantua allowed him to develop a highly original style of painting where a variety of different influences blended together. He trained during the last days of Mannerism, but he was influenced decisively by Rubens' arrival in Italy. His dialogue with Rubens and more generally his interest in Flemish and Dutch painting gave rise to a rich and luminous way with his brushstrokes. Feti, who was also an excellent portraitist, was one of a group of non-Venetian artists (including the German Liss and the Genoan Strozzi) who revivified painting in the city when there was a scarcity of native talent. Consequently, he is often classed as a member of the Venetian School, even though he spent only the last two years of his life there.

Mockery

2011-03-22T07:27:00.000-07:00

Title: Mockery
Artist: Emil Nolde
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 86 x 106 cm
Date: 1909
Location: Brucke Museum, Berlin.

John 19:2-3 The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they slapped him in the face.

Noldes's figures are large scale, crammed together in a constricting space. The result is crowded and claustrophobic. Nolde focuses our attention on the intense emotions of the event. Furthermore, the harsh drawing, agitated brushwork, and distortion of the figures enforce this feeling.

Emil Nolde (August 1867 – April 1956) was a German painter and printmaker. He was one of the first Expressionists and a member of Die Brücke, an influential group of German expressionist artists formed in Dresden in 1905. But for Nolde, the Third Reich brought defamation. His paintings were confiscated from the museums and his work was a special focus of the exhibition "Entartete Kunst" ("Degenerate Art"). From 1941 on he was prohibited from painting at all. Secretly he paint small scale watercolors which he called "unpainted pictures". After the war, between his eightieth and eighty-fifth birthday he gained various honors and awards. He is now considered to be one of the great painters of the 20th century, known for his vigorous brushwork and expressive choice of colors.

Flagellation

2011-03-21T20:45:00.000-07:00

Title: Flagellation
Artist: Michael Pacher
Medium: Panel
Size: 113 x 139.5 cm
Date: 1495-98
Location: Österreichische Galerie, Vienna.

John 19:1 Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.

The panel was part of the altarpiece in the parish church of Salzburg, but only a few fragments remain. The work was Pacher’s last and, at 3300 Rhenish guilders, best-paying commission. Sadly, in 1709, the Franciscan friars of Salzburg condemned the existing altarpiece as “ancient and decrepit”, and it was dismantled. The severely trimmed depictions of the Betrothal and Flagellation that survived originally formed the front and rear views of one panel. Reconstruction evinces a double-transforming altarpiece with a shrine-height of 5.5 meters and an overall height of 16 meters, making it the largest known retable of this late-Gothic altar type featuring a Gesprenge (decorative super structure).

Michael Pacher (c. 1435 — August 1498) was an Austrian Tyrolean painter and sculptor active during the last quarter of the 15th century. Pacher was one of the earliest artists to introduce the principles of Renaissance painting into Germany. He was a comprehensive artist with a broad range of skills: sculpting, painting, and architecture of complex wood and stone. He painted structures for altarpieces on a scale unparalleled in North European art. His influence is primarily North Italian, and his work shares characteristics with that of painters such as Andrea Mantegna; however, German influences are also evident in his work, especially in his wood sculpture. He was most active from 1462 until his death.

Christ Presented to the People

2011-03-20T10:30:00.000-07:00

Title: Christ Presented to the People
Artist: Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn
Medium: Drypoint on paper
Size: 39.1 x 45.4 cm
Date: 1655
Location: Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis.

John 18:28-40 Then the Jewish leaders took Jesus from Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor. By now it was early morning, and to avoid ceremonial uncleanness they did not enter the palace, because they wanted to be able to eat the Passover. So Pilate came out to them and asked, “What charges are you bringing against this man?” They replied, “If he were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.” Pilate said, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.” They objected: “But we have no right to execute anyone.” This took place to fulfill what Jesus had said about the kind of death he was going to die. Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus asked, “Is that your own idea, or did others talk to you about me?” Pilate replied, ““Am I a Jew? Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?” Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” Pilate said, “You are a king, then!” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” Pilate retorted “What is truth?” With this he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him. But it is your custom for me to release to you one prisoner at the time of the Passover. Do you want me to release ‘the king of the Jews’?” They shouted back, “No, not him! Give us Barabbas!” Now Barabbas had taken part in an uprising.

Silhouetted by a dark arch, the three protagonists, Pontius Pilate, Christ, and Barabbas, stand on the podium before a large civic building. Rembrandt captures the moment when Pilate, pointing towards Christ, asks the assembles crowd the question: "What then shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?" They all shout back, "Let Him be crucified!" Surrounded by an extraordinary architectural setting, soldiers, and the surge of the crowd below him, Christ looks helpless and isolated. This is one of Rembrandt's most celebrated prints because of its size, rarity, and complex composition. It is one of the few that Rembrandt did exclusively in drypoint, a process in which a sharp point is used to scratch a line directly into the copperplate.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (July 1606 – October 1669) was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history, his work contributing to a period that historians call the Dutch Golden Age. Rembrandt produced etchings for most of his career, from 1626 to 1660, when he was forced to sell his printing-press and virtually abandoned etching. Only the troubled year of 1649 produced no dated work. Despite Rembrandt's financial success as an artist, teacher, and art dealer, his penchant for ostentatious living forced him to declare bankruptcy in 1656.

Peter’s Denial

2011-03-19T11:36:00.000-07:00

Title: Peter’s Denial
Artist: Michael D. O’Brien
Medium: Acrylic on hardboard
Size: 60 x 60 cm
Date: c. 2005
Location: Private collection

John 18:25-27 Meanwhile, Simon Peter was still standing there warming himself. So they asked him, “You aren’t one of his disciples too, are you?” He denied it, saying, “I am not.” One of the high priest’s servants, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, challenged him, “Didn’t I see you with him in the garden?” Again Peter denied it, and at that moment a rooster began to crow.

As noted by the artist, Simon Bar Jonah loves Jesus, but does not understand himself. He is often brave and considers himself to be very strong. The Lord has renamed him "Peter", "Kepha", meaning "rock." When the time of ultimate testing comes, however, he is astonished and horrified to find himself ruled by fear, denying that he knows Jesus. John, by making Peter's denials simultaneous with Jesus' defense before Annas, has constructed a dramatic contrast wherein Jesus stands up to his questioners and denies nothing, while Peter cowers before his questioners and denies everything. The foil Peter provides helps highlight Jesus' regal strength and authority, the hallmark of John's portrait of Jesus in his passion. Yet Peter does repent, and in this repentance are the seeds of the man who will become the rock on which the Church is built.

Michael D. O'Brien (b. 1948) is a Roman Catholic author, artist, and frequent essayist and lecturer on faith and culture, living in Combermere, Ontario, Canada. Born in Ottawa, he is self-taught, without an academic background. His paintings, in a neo-Byzantine style with a contemporary interpretation, are also featured on the covers of all of his books. His work can be seen on his website http://www.studiobrien.com/.

Green Passion: Christ before Caiaphas

2011-03-18T06:39:00.000-07:00

Title: Green Passion: Christ before Caiaphas
Artist: Albrecht Dürer
Medium: Pen drawing on green primed paper
Size: 28.3 x 17.8 cm
Date: 1504
Location: Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna.

John 18:18-24 Meanwhile, the high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching. “I have spoken openly to the world,” Jesus replied. “I always taught in synagogues or at the temple, where all the Jews come together. I said nothing in secret. Why question me? Ask those who heard me. Surely they know what I said.” When Jesus said this, one of the officials nearby slapped him in the face. “Is this the way you answer the high priest?” he demanded. “If I said something wrong,” Jesus replied, “testify as to what is wrong. But if I spoke the truth, why did you strike me?” Then Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest.

The Green Passion, so named after the green primed paper, consists of twelve sheets, the purpose of which is not known. It has been assumed that they were used as preliminary sketches for stained glass windows. Like the other pictures, the sheet of Christ before Caiaphas distinguishes itself through its fine white highlights which achieve a magical plasticity and dramatic lighting - as was created by the "clair-obscur" technique - in their harmony with the green base color of the scene. Christ and Pilate, the two antagonists in the foreground, are positioned opposite each other and emphasized both by the lighting and the architecture.

Albrecht Dürer (May 1471 – April 1528) was a painter and printmaker, generally regarded as the greatest German Renaissance artist. His vast body of work includes altarpieces and religious works, numerous portraits and self-portraits, and copper engravings. Dürer was a Roman Catholic, although his writings suggest that he may have been sympathetic to Martin Luther's ideas. Dürer wrote of his desire to draw Luther in his diary in 1520: "And God help me that I may go to Dr. Martin Luther; thus I intend to make a portrait of him with great care and engrave him on a copper plate to create a lasting memorial of the Christian man who helped me overcome so many difficulties." His success in spreading his reputation across Europe through prints was undoubtedly an inspiration for major artists such as Raphael, Titian, and Parmigianino, who entered into collaborations with printmakers to distribute their work beyond their local region.

Peter's Denial

2011-03-17T06:59:00.000-07:00

Title: Peter's Denial
Artist: Carl Bloch
Medium: Oil on Copper Plate
Size: 104 x 84 cm
Date: 1865
Location: National History Museum, Frederiksborg Castle, Denmark.

John 18:15-18 Simon Peter and another disciple were following Jesus. Because this disciple was known to the high priest, he went with Jesus into the high priest’s courtyard, but Peter had to wait outside at the door. The other disciple, who was known to the high priest, came back, spoke to the servant girl on duty there and brought Peter in. “You aren’t one of this man’s disciples too, are you?” she asked Peter. He replied, “I am not.” It was cold, and the servants and officials stood around a fire they had made to keep warm. Peter also was standing with them, warming himself.

John mentions "another disciple" who is known to the high priest and his household. It is not said whether Peter was unable to enter the room with the other disciple, or whether he chose to remain outside. The latter seems unlikely, given Peter's character, but the arrest has shaken him. He is now sifted, beginning with a question from the woman who attended the door. She asks, literally, "You also are not one of the disciples of this man, are you?" But, of course, there would be little other reason for a stranger to be there in the courtyard in the middle of a cold night. Furthermore, the fact that she says "you also" most likely indicates that she knows the other is a follower of Jesus. In this account, therefore, it seems to be Peter's association with the unnamed disciple that draws attention to his relation to Jesus. This other disciple shows no concern about her feelings regarding his discipleship, for he not only was admitted by her, but also came back to get Peter in. While Peter's attack with the sword may have made him fearful of being recognized, he is not in a position of legal difficulty, since there is no warrant for his arrest. Nor is there indication that he was physically threatened by this woman or the others. He has no such excuses for his denial. He who a few hours earlier had said he would die for Jesus now denies any association with him purely out of fear of what people would think.

Carl Heinrich Bloch (May 1834 – February 1890) was a Danish painter. He was born in Copenhagen and studied with Wilhelm Marstrand at the Royal Danish Academy of Art (Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi). His early work featured rural scenes from everyday life. From 1859 to 1866, Bloch lived in Italy. After many of Bloch’s paintings that were coming out of Italy were seen by influential patrons back home, he was commissioned to paint 23 new paintings for the King's Praying Chamber in the newly restored Frederiksborg Castle Chapel, in Hillerød, Denmark. Those paintings have become very popular illustrations, so much so that for over 40 years the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has made heavy use of the imagery in Bloch's paintings in its church buildings and printed media.

Taking Christ Ward

2011-03-16T06:42:00.000-07:00

Title: Taking Christ Ward
Artist: Ilya Repin
Medium: Oil on canvas.
Size: tbd
Date: 1886
Location: tbd

John 18:1-14 When he had finished praying, Jesus left with his disciples and crossed the Kidron Valley. On the other side there was a garden, and he and his disciples went into it. Now Judas, who betrayed him, knew the place, because Jesus had often met there with his disciples. So Judas came to the garden, guiding a detachment of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and the Pharisees. They were carrying torches, lanterns and weapons. Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, “Who is it you want?” They replied, “Jesus of Nazareth.” (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.) “I am he,” Jesus said. When Jesus said, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground. Again he asked them, “Who is it you want?” They replied, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he. If you are looking for me, then let these men go.” This happened so that the words he had spoken would be fulfilled: “I have not lost one of those you gave me. “Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.) Jesus commanded Peter, “Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?” Then the detachment of soldiers with its commander and the Jewish officials arrested Jesus. They bound him and brought him first to Annas, who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest that year. Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jewish leaders that it would be good if one man died for the people.

The group that came to arrest Jesus was composed of Roman soldiers, Jewish servants and an apostate apostle. John will make it clear that both Jew and Gentile are guilty of the death of the Son of God. Jesus is about to die for the life of the world, and the whole world needs it. The Jewish forces that were sent were not a police force as such but court servants at the disposal of the Sanhedrin when necessary for police purposes. The detachment of soldiers (speira) refers to a cohort, a group of 600 soldiers under a military tribune. The entire cohort would not have been deployed on this mission, but there would have been a significant force. The festivals in Jerusalem were always politically volatile, and after the welcome Jesus had received there was good reason to expect trouble--or so it would have seemed to the Roman and Jewish authorities who understood Jesus so poorly. They bring torches and lanterns to search for the Light of the World; they bring weapons against the Prince of Peace.

Ilya Yefimovich Repin (August 1844 – September, 1930) was a leading Russian painter and sculptor of the Peredvizhniki artistic school. In 1866, after apprenticeship with a local icon painter named Bunakov and preliminary study of portrait painting, he went to Saint Petersburg and was shortly admitted to the Imperial Academy of Arts as a student. From 1873 to 1876 on the Academy's allowance, Repin sojourned in Italy and lived in Paris, where he was exposed to French Impressionist painting, which had a lasting effect upon his use of light and color. His realistic works often expressed great psychological depth and exposed the tensions within the existing social order. Beginning in the late 1920s, detailed works on him were published in the Soviet Union, where a Repin cult developed about a decade later, and where he was held up as a model "progressive" and "realist" to be imitated by "Socialist Realist" artists in the USSR.

Christ as Saviour

2011-03-15T06:52:00.000-07:00

Title: Christ as Saviour
Artist: El Greco
Medium: Oil on canvas.
Size: 73 x 56.5 cm
Date: c. 1600
Location: National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

John 17:1-26 After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of[ your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled. I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

This painting likely was painted as an individual work, not belonging to a series of Christ with the Apostles (known in Spanish as Apostolado). Christ is represented as the Savior of the World (Salvator Mundi). The long and narrow head of Christ, the frontal position and the hieratic quality of the representation are strongly reminiscent of Byzantine images of the Pantocrator (Christ as Ruler of all), with which El Greco was very familiar.

El Greco (1541 – April, 1614) was a painter, sculptor, and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. Today considered one of the greatest artists of the Spanish school El Greco was born in Crete, a Greek island then under Venetian control. The artist always acknowledged his heritage, signing his works with his given name, Domenikos Theotokopoulus, in Greek characters. Little is known of his youth, but El Greco's early works in the Byzantine tradition of icon painting demonstrate that he learned his skills within this conservative tradition before exposure to Venetian High Renaissance art broadened his stylistic approach.

Christ Taking Leave of the Apostles

2011-03-14T07:08:00.000-07:00

Title: Christ Taking Leave of the Apostles
Artist: Duccio di Buoninsegna
Medium: Tempera on wood.
Size: 50 x 53 cm
Date: c. 1308-11
Location: Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena.

John 16:1-33 “All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. I have told you this, so that when their time comes you will remember that I warned you about them. I did not tell you this from the beginning because I was with you, but now I am going to him who sent me. [...] I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.” [...] Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking clearly and without figures of speech. Now we can see that you know all things and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.” Jesus replied, “Do you now believe? A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me. I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Duccio portrays Jesus giving the new commandment to the apostles (now eleven), Judas having already betray Him. His sideways position, shown up by the half-open door, is in contrast to the close-knit group of disciples. They are all turning the same way in thoughtful attitudes, the soft drapery of their colored robes animating the whole scene. Duccio has avoided haloes since the conspicuous shape of the golden discs might have created an overpowering effect, besides taking up most of the space in the picture.

Duccio di Buoninsegna (c. 1255-1260 – c. 1318-1319) was the first great Sienese painter, and one of the most influential Italian artists of his time. Born in Siena, Tuscany, he worked mostly with pigment and egg tempera and like most of his contemporaries painted religious subjects. He influenced Simone Martini and the brothers Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti, among others. Duccio sums up the grave and austere beauty of centuries of Byzantine tradition and infuses it with a breath of the new humanity which was being spread by the new Orders of SS. Francis and Dominic.