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

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 11 - Christ in Limbo

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 3 - Lamentation

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."

Descent from the Cross

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.

Descent from the Cross

Title: Descent from the Cross

Artist: Jean-Baptiste Jouvenet

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 424 x 312 cm

Date: 1697

Location: Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Mark 15:46 So Joseph bought some linen cloth, took down the body,

The Descent from the Cross, or Deposition of Christ, is the scene, as depicted in art, from the Gospels' accounts of Christ being taken down from the cross after his crucifixion. In Byzantine art the topic became popular in the 9th century, and in the West from the 10th century. It was forbidden for Jews to touch a dead body, and even though the men made themselves unclean by burying Jesus, it’s unlikely that any of the women would have actually had any direct contact. In fact, Luke 23:54-56 indicates that they planned to do their part in the burial after the Sabbath, on Sunday morning. Taking Jesus off the cross and placing Him in the tomb was men’s work.

This bold and vigorous painting, with its magnificent harmony of warm colors, foreshadows the most beautiful of the nineteenth-century Romantic Paintings. He details the bodies and the faces with precision. The arms, legs and torsos knotted around the slanting cross convey a power which rivals that of the baroque masters. Executed for the church of the Capuchins in the Place Louis-le-grande, Paris, it was donated to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1756. During the French Revolution, it was acquired by the Louvre, as were all the other paintings which had belonged to the Académie.

Jean-Baptiste Jouvenet (1644 – 5 April 1717) was a French painter, especially well know for his religious subjects. "Theatrical" is a term often used to describe the work of Jouvenet, an artist who was influenced by Poussin and took Charles Le Brun as his model. However, while he maintains the "grand goût" of his masters, he breaks with reflective painting, investigating broad dramatic effects, warm tones, and a certain realism. Due to Jouvenet's work, French painting in the late 17th century attained a pictorial expression which could rival the great foreign baroque masters. He was born into an artistic family in Rouen. His first training in art was from his father, Laurent Jouvenet; a generation earlier, his grandfather, Noel Jouvenet, may have taught Nicolas Poussin.