The Appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene

Title: The Appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene

Artist: Alexander Ivanov

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: tdb.

Date: 1835

Location: The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

Mark 16:9 When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons.

Most biblical scholars agree that the original writer of the Gospel of Mark did not write the verses that follow 16:8, and the question arises as to whether that verse was the original ending of the Gospel. That idea has always seemed to make readers uneasy, and in antiquity there were several attempts to graft an ending onto Mark (16:9-20). These spurious endings offer the reader a choice: did the writer mean for the Gospel to end at 16:8, or was there an original ending that was somehow lost? Some scholars have proposed that the Gospel of John, chapter 21, contains most of the elements that were originally found in Mark. There is also evidence that Luke knew the original Mark complete with the material found in John 21, as Luke 5:3-10 merged Mark's story of how Jesus met Peter with a tale of a miraculous catch of fish found in John.

Ivanov’s ‘The Appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene’ was warmly welcomed in St Petersburg and won him the title of Academician. The artist himself, however, was not entirely happy with the painting and it’s formal theatricality, reportedly referring to it as merely "corn-cob." Yet in his fascinating preparatory drawings for it, he conveyed the figures in a freer and more natural manner.

Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov (July 28, 1806 – July 15, 1858) was a Russian painter. His father, Andrey Ivanov, was an artist, the professor of the Academy of Arts, and it was his father who first taught Alexander art. Beginning around 1833, and throughout the next twenty years of his life, Ivanov consistently pondered over the theme of his masterpiece ‘The Appearance of Christ to the People’. This huge painting became, with time, synonymous with Ivanov's entire career. In 1858 Ivanov returned to St Petersburg and died two months later. His tremendous influence on Russian art can hardly be assessed in a few words. He undoubtedly ranks among the major Russian artists of the first half of the nineteenth century. His paintings, studies and drawings are a priceless part of the classical heritage.

The Two Marys at the Tomb

Title: The Two Marys at the Tomb

Artist: Bartolomeo Schedoni

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: tbd.

Date: 1613

Location: Galleria Nazionale, Parma.

Mark 16:6-8 "Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.' "

Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

Throughout Mark, people spread news that they were supposed to keep quiet; here, when Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome are finally commanded to spread the word, they keep quiet. Again, the Gospel displays and ironic twist.

This memorable masterpiece, The Two Marys at the Tomb, gives us cause to regret the brevity of Bartolomeo Schedoni's tormented artistic life. It shows that he really would have been able to point Baroque painting in an original and intense direction. The way he blocked out gestures, used violent light and dazzling whites, combined with perfect clarity of detail to produce an almost metaphysical effect.

Bartolomeo Schedoni (1578-1615) was an Italian early Baroque painter and an eccentric exponent of the Emilian school. Schedoni went to Rome at the close of the sixteenth century, but he soon returned to Emilia and settled in Parma. It was there that he painted a small but fascinating group of masterpieces in a severe and noble style. At the same time his works were warmed by a light that softened fabrics and added delicacy to expressions. His untimely death (perhaps suicide owing to gambling debts) brought an abrupt end to the career of one of the most attractive painters of the seventeenth century.

The Holy Women at the Sepulcher

Title: Le Saintes Femmes au Tombeau (The Holy Women at the Sepulcher)

Artist: William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Size: tbd

Date: 1890

Location: Private Collection

Mark 16: 4-5 But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

This painting by Bouguereau has an immediacy and vividness, an seems to have been influenced by photography. The young man in white, only just visible in the light that comes from the tomb, at first seems largely redundant. The first and third women are also well composed, but all the meaning and power of the picture is focused in the central figure, on her astonished face and her clasped hands. But the composition invites us to look beyond just the surface image. We can see a fourth place left available to stand among the women, to peer into the tomb, to see what the three women see. There is a place for us to bear witness if we are willing to take the step forward.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (November 30, 1825 - August 19, 1905) was a French academic painter. Bouguereau was a staunch traditionalist whose realistic genre paintings and mythological themes were modern interpretations of Classical subjects. Toward the end of his career, at the same time that he was admired by the public, he was also impugned by a growing clique of painters and writers of the new generation who considered themselves progressive, and who believed that rebellion against traditional values in painting was their raison d'etre. Bouguereau and his colleagues were rapidly labeled as reactionaries in the face of this growing cult of the new, found first in Impressionism and Post Impressionism. His fate was to be much like that of Rembrandt, whose work was also ridiculed and banished from museums and official art circles for the hundred years following his death.

Women the Morning of the Third Day

Title: Femmes au Matin du 3e Jour (Women the morning of the third day)

Artist: Macha Chmakoff

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 81 x 65 cm

Date: c. 2008

Location: Private collection

Mark 16:1-3 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?"

The women return to the tomb to finish the burial preparations for Jesus that had been omitted due to he onset of Sabbath two nights previous. The spices they bought were not part of a traditional burial for everyone, but would have been used only for the bodies of special persons. In other words, their reason for coming was to serve Jesus. In the Gospel of Mark, women occupy a central position in the mission and message of Jesus as examples of model disciples. These women frequently serve as triumphant examples of faith and sacrifice in contrast to unbelieving men.

Macha Chmakoff is a French psychologist, author, and painter, who studied theology at the Université Catholique de Paris. Chmakoff’s work reflects her belief that society is marked by the divorce between religion and spirituality, and the Christian religion proposes to guide the believer into the fullness of his humanity. To become fully human takes awareness of an emptiness, and Christianity provides the tools required to penetrate the source of this emptiness. More of her work can be viewed on her website at http://www.chmakoff.com/

Resurrection

Title: Resurrection

Artist: Jan Styka

Medium: Oil on cardboard

Size: 41 x 32.5 cm

Date: 1901

Location: Private collection

The Gospel of Mark has no actual account of the resurrection. Events progress from the entombment to the morning when the Sabbath has past. An argument can be made that the resurrection, while a real event according to the unanimous testimony of the canonical Gospels, is not historical in the sense that ordinary events are. It occurs at a point where history ends and God’s end-time kingdom begins. It is not in itself an observable occurrence. No one saw God raise Jesus from the dead. Nor can it be verified. In a sense, it is an inference from the disciple’s Easter visions, and the empty tomb.

Yet the mind can not help but wonder what kind of a sight it would have been to witness. According to Matthew 27:66, the chief priests and the Pharisees, with the sanction of Pilate, went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting a guard. But even here there is no clear indication if anything was witnessed, or if everything happened behind sealed doors. In keeping with tradition, however, Styka’s painting depicts a transcendent, glorious Christ, at the moment of his freedom from the tomb, the moment when God’s promise of eternal life becomes fulfilled.

Jan Styka (April 8, 1858 - April 11, 1925) was an ethnic Polish-born painter noted for producing large historical and Christian panoramas. Styka, son of an officer in Austria-Hungary, attended school in his native Lemberg and then studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria. Afterward he took up residence in Italy for a short time before moving to France where the great art movements at Montmartre and Montparnasse were taking shape, and where he would spend a large part of his life.

Christ in Limbo

Title: Christ in Limbo

Artist: Fra Angelico

Medium: Fresco

Size: 183 x 166 cm

Date: c. 1450

Location: Florence, Cloister, cell 31, Museo di San Marco.

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.

In ‘Christ in Limbo’, Christ, as Conqueror, enters through the gate, which has fallen flat at His approach, beneath it Lucifer lies crushed, the impersonation of death and sin. The Saviour stretches forth His hand to Abraham, the father of the faithful, foremost among the vast multitude of "spirits in prison," who have so long awaited His coming. Among these can be seen Adam and Eve. The Italian critics look upon it as a marvelous rendering of the well-known passage in the Inferno (Canto IV, 54 et seq).

Fra Angelico (c. 1395 – February 18, 1455), was a Florentine painter as well as a Dominican friar, having entered a Dominican convent in Fiesole in 1418. He rose from obscure beginnings as a journeyman illuminator to the renown of an artist whose last major commissions were monumental fresco cycles in St Peter’s and the Vatican Palace, Rome. Within his lifetime or shortly thereafter he was also called Il Beato (the Blessed), in reference to his skills in painting religious subjects. In 1982 Pope John Paul II conferred beatification, in recognition of the holiness of his life, thereby making this title official.

The Sorrows of the Mother of God

Title: The Sorrows of the Mother of God

Artist: Mikhail Petrovich Botkin

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Size: tbd.

Date: c. 1870

Location: tbd.

Mary, mother of Jesus, is depicted as forlorn. The three crosses used in the crucifixion are outlined against the setting sun, a reminder against the orange glow on the horizon. Mary, too, holds reminders of the trauma: left over linen and the crown of thorns are draped in her arms. She is a portrait of disbelieving grief.

Mikhail Petrovich Botkin (1839-1914) was an academically trained history painter, know for his Christian paintings and genre compositions. He came from a famous family in Russia. One of his brothers was a famous author, and another a brilliant. Botkin entered the Academy of Fine Arts in St Petersburg in 1856, but he left without finishing his studies there, and instead went to Italy using his own means. From there he also visited Germany, France, and Spain, studying the techniques of the artists in these countries. Botkin also worked in business, and was a director of several firms, including the Russian Steam Navigation and Trade Society, the first Russian insurance society, and a St Petersburg commercial bank. The means earned from such activity allowed him to support public initiatives developing young artists. Botkin was an avid art collector and connoisseur, and paintings from his collection were carried to many exhibitions in Russia and all over Europe.