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

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.

Calvary

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.

The Removal from the Cross

Title: The Removal from the Cross

Artist: Vasili Perov

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: tbd.

Date: 1878

Location: The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Mark 15:46 [Joseph] wrapped the body in the linen,

Mary, Mary Magdalene and Joseph of Arimathea have removed Christ from the cross and have been preparing body for entombment. Christ rests on the ground, his livid body a shocking contrast with the blood-red sky in the background, the crown of thorns and the nail from his feet lying next to him. A mourning Mary looks as if she could barely sit up. Mary Magdalene makes no effort to rise and lies holding his feet and burying her face in grief. Joseph has straightened up after cleaning the body and his ramrod straight back parallels the crosses while offering a contrast with the bowed, almost crushed female figures and denoting the upright man. The basin, full of Christ's blood, may evoke the legend according to which Joseph filled a holy grail with Christ's blood.

Vasili Grigorievich Perov (December 23, 1834 – May 29, 1882) was a Russian painter. He was an illegitimate son of the baron G. K. Kridiner, an Arzamas prosecutor. In 1846, he entered the Art School of Stupin in Arzamas, where he got his nickname of Perov for his good handwriting (from Russian pero, pen). He lived at a time when an artist’s indifference to social problems was considered immoral in Russia. And it was Perov who took up a vital and most complicated task of establishing the principles of critical realism. He became one of the most predominating figures in Russian painting of the 1860s. In 1871, together with Ivan Kramskoi, Nikolai Ge, and Grigory Miasoyedov became a founder of the Itinerants’ Society of Traveling Exhibitions (the Peredvizhniki). Also in 1871, Perov became a professor at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, and he turned out to be an excellent teacher.

Golgotha (The Crucifixion of Christ)

Title: Golgotha (The Crucifixion of Christ)

Artist: Ilya Repin

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Size: 99 x 80cm

Date: 1869

Location: tbd.

The site of the crucifixion, “The Place of the Skull”, was likely so named because so many deaths had occurred there. The suggestion that the place was so named because it was shaped like a skull is possible, but the likelihood that the Romans happened to find a conspicuous place outside the city walls of Jerusalem, that happened to be shaped like a skull, seems suspect at best.

This painting of the chaos on Golgotha is a masterpiece of composition. The heavy sky, punctuated only by the raising of Jesus on the cross, lies in contrast to the mass of curious humanity in the lower half of the canvas. Chariots, onlookers, and banners all vie for position. On the far right is what appears to be a small group of Jesus’ followers. In Mark’s gospel, the disciples are notably absent after Jesus’ arrest, Mark (15:40) notes that “And there were also women beholding from afar”.

Ilya Yefimovich Repin (5 August 1844, Chuguyev, Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire – September 29, 1930, Kuokkala, Finland) 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.

What is Truth? (Christ and Pilate)

Title: What is Truth? (Christ and Pilate)

Artist: Nikolai Ge

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 233 x 171 cm

Date: 1890

Location: The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

After the Romans along with the temple police had arrested Jesus, he was brought before the Governor. He was questioned by Pontius Pilate who stated: “So you are a king,” And when Jesus replies that he was born into this world to tell the truth, Pilate asks “What is truth?” before pronouncing “I don’t find this man guilty of anything!” Some have held that this question of Pilate's was asked in scorn, but his conduct throughout the trial shows that he was impressed.

In the 1880s, the themes of Christ and the Gospels resurfaced in Ge’s work. Unlike the "new hero" figure portrayed by many of his contemporaries, however, the figure of Jesus in Ge's paintings reflects a deeper, personal psyche. What is Truth (Christ and Pilate) was removed from exhibition under pressure from the Church. Although Ge was inspired by genuine religious feeling, his mute, haggard Jesus offended some.

Nikolai Nikolayevich Ge (27 February 1831 – 13 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.

Christ in the Desert

Title: Christ in the Desert (aka Christ in the Wilderness)
Artist: Ivan Kramskoi

Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: 1872
Size: 180 x 210 cm
Location: Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

This painting depicts events in Matthew, Chapter 4, where Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted, tested and tried by the devil. Here, he went without food for forty days and forty nights. Though a traditional topic, Kramskoi imbues the work with new social interpretation and deep philosophical meaning. Christ in the Desert carried the idea of man’s moral duty to society, and therefore greatly impressed the painter’s contemporaries.

The Artist, born in Russia in 1837, attended the prestigious St Petersburg Academy of the Arts, but was eventually expelled for his reactions to the Academy's insistence to adhere to Academic traditions. Under the influence of the ideas of the Russian revolutionary democrats, he was a key founder of the Peredvizhniki (Wanderers), the first truly Russian national “school of art”. It stressed the heroism of ordinary life and ordinary people engaged in their usual activities, resulting in touching and dignified paintings of the peasantry. He died April 26, 1887.