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

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.

Jesus Encirled

Title: Jesus Encirled
Artist: Rachel Monteagudo
Medium: Linoleum print and acrylic paint
Size: tbd
Date: 2007
Location: Private collection.

While in 11th grade at Norcross High School in Norcross, Georgia, artist Rachel Monteagudo created this arresting image of Jesus, which went on to be featured in various student art shows. Her stark, almost wistful, Man of Sorrows is made triumphant by the encircling of this image with a radiant red and gold ovoid. There are allusions to the fourth chapter of the Revelation, notably chapter 4:2-3, and the vision of the throne room of God: “At once I came under the Holy Spirit's power, and behold, a throne stood in heaven, with One seated on the throne! And He who sat there appeared like the crystalline brightness of jasper and the fiery carnelian, and encircling the throne there was a halo that looked like a rainbow of emerald.”

This image continues to follow a movement that seems to have evolved away from the realistic humanization of Jesus, championed by those the like the Russian Peredvizhniki, instead having focused on transcendent, redemptive imagery of the Messiah. Jesus is shown not as a human being like us, but rather as one who resonates the power and glory of the Son of Man. As foretold in the Book of Daniel 7:13-14 “I saw in the night visions, and behold, on the clouds of the heavens came One like a Son of man, and He came to the Ancient One and was presented before Him. And there was He given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and His kingdom is one which shall not be destroyed.”

Christ in Glory in the Tetramorph

Title: Christ in Glory in the Tetramorph (First Cartoon)
Artist: Graham Sutherland
Medium: Oil on Gouache on board
Size: 201.9 x 110.5 cm
Date: 1953
Location: Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry.

This cartoon was in response to a specific commission from reconstruction committee of Coventry Cathedral in England. The requirement was to combine the victory, serenity and compassion of Christ in Glory as depicted in Revelation 4:2-7 “...there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it. And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and ruby...” Sutherland sought to find a means of expression that drew partly on convention, yet in places could might break entirely free from it to speak directly to the contemporary viewer. His Christ would ‘look vital, non-sentimental, non-ecclesiastical, of the moment, yet for all time.’

Graham Vivien Sutherland (August, 1903 – February, 1980) was an English artist. In his early years he produced prints of pastoral subjects, and did not begin to paint in earnest until he was in his mid-30s, following the collapse of the print market in 1930. Sutherland focused on the inherent strangeness of natural forms, and abstracting them, sometimes giving his work a surrealist appearance. Having converted to Catholicism in 1926, from around 1950, until his death he was deeply involved in religion. Following the war he produced several religious pieces, including The Crucifixion (1946) for St Matthew's Church, Northampton and the tapestry Christ in Glory for Coventry Cathedral. This cartoon was the first study for the Coventry tapestry.

Worship before the Throne of God

Title: Worship before the Throne of God

Artist: Unknown

Medium: Illuminated Manuscript

Size: 29.5 x 20.4 cm

Date: c. 1020

Location: Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, MS A. II. 42

The Book of Revelation, also called the Revelation of St. John, the Apocalypse of John, is considered to be one of the most controversial and difficult books of the Bible, with many diverse interpretations of the various names and events in the account. In the fourth century, Gregory of Nazianzus and other bishops argued against including this book in the New Testament canon, chiefly because of the difficulties of interpreting it and the danger for abuse. Regardless, Revelation was a powerful message of hope for those early Christians who had to suffer or die for their faith.

The entire 4th chapter of Revelation is a vision of the throne room of God. God is the chief and primary subject in view pictured as being seated on a throne. The language describing Him paints a picture of glory, power, and majesty: “the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne.” Various heavenly creatures and retainers praised God as flashes of lightning and roars of thunder came out from the throne.

The Bamberg Apocalypse is a richly illuminated manuscript containing the Book of Revelation, and a Gospel Lectionary containing lessons from the Gospels for use in liturgy. The Bamberg Apocalypse was commissioned by Otto III, and is among the most marvelous illuminated medieval manuscripts and the only illustrated cycle of the Apocalypse produced by Ottonian book painting. The leading scriptorium of the empire endowed the manuscript with imperial luxury: 57 miniatures on gilded ground and over 100 golden initials ornate its 106 leafs. After the early and unexpected death of the emperor at the age of 21, the codex remained unfinished for some time in the scriptorium of Reichenau before his successor Henry II ordered the manuscript to be finished.

The Fall of the Rebel Angels

Title: The Fall of the Rebel Angels

Artist: Luca Giordano

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 419 x 283 cm

Date: 1666

Location: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

From Revelation 12:7-9, “And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.” It has been said that the fall of the rebel angels is the greatest single theme of the Counter-Reformation. The theme allowed a church in conflict to present its propaganda regarding the struggle against heresy by using the theme of the struggling angel, also symbolizing the triumph of light over the rebellion of the powers of darkness.

Giordano sets the scene with relatively few figures, in which heaven and hell, the incense of the blessed and the brimstone of the damned are contrasted in an extremely confined space, creating an arc of tension within which the knight-like angel spreads his broad wings and wields his sword in a sweeping gesture of victory. Against a background of deep golden light, the archangel balances with an almost balletic movement on the heavy breast of Lucifer, entangled amidst a group of his servants, his angular and batlike wings cutting through the hazy sfumato of the hellfire. What appears at first glance to be so dramatic is not in fact the depiction of a struggle as such. Michael is not attacking the figures from hell with his sword, but is holding it aloft like a sign, as though his mere appearance were enough to cast Satan and his followers into eternal damnation.

Luca Giordano (18 October 1634 – 3 January 1705) was an Italian late Baroque painter and printmaker in etching. Born in Naples, Giordano was the son of Antonio Giordano, an undistinguished painter. At a precocious age, Giordano was apprenticed to Ribera on the recommendation of the viceroy of Naples.

The Virgin with Angels

Title: The Virgin with Angels (Regina Angelorum)

Artist: William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 285 x 185 cm

Date: 1900

Location: Musée du Petit Palais, Paris

Mary, mother of Jesus, has taken on many aspects during the thousands of years that have passed since she walked the earth: Mother of God, ever virgin, Mother of the Church, Mediatrix, Co-Redemptrix, etc. The image of a woman crowned with twelve stars first appears in Revelation 12:1-5, where she gives birth to a male child, portending the rise of Satan as the great dragon and the final war in heaven.

All Bouguereau’s works were executed in several stages involving an initial oil sketch followed by numerous pencil drawings taken from life. Some critics contend that his prevalent use and idealization of children is often responsible for the sentimentality that mars many of his works, but the Christ child here is both natural and divine.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (November 30, 1825 – August 19, 1905) was a French academic painter. A staunch traditionalist, his realistic genre paintings and modern interpretations of Classical subjects featured a heavy emphasis on the female body. Although his work was widely collected by the English and Americans in his lifetime, Bouguereau’s reputation in France was more equivocal—indeed quite low—in his later years. Bouguereau’s detractors have unkindly likened his Madonnas to perfumed Ary Scheffers.

Saint John the Evangelist's Vision of Jerusalem

Title: Saint John the Evangelist's Vision of Jerusalem
Artist: Alonso Cano
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: 1636-37
Size: 83 x 44 cm
Location: Wallace Collection, London.

This painting, contracted on 23 November 1635, was executed for the convent church of Santa Paula in Seville. It is evident that the artist had mastered an Italianate manner of painting. The partly clad figure of the angel, the complicated, foreshortened pose, and the mastery of anatomical drawing are unique elements in Sevillian painting of the time, as are the deep perspective of the landscape and the delicate, translucent colors.

Depicted are events from The Revelation of St. John 21:2, where St. John is shown the holy city, new Jerusalem, "coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."

Alonso Cano or Alonzo Cano (19 March 1601 – 3 September 1667) was a Spanish painter, architect and sculptor born in Granada. While living in Madrid he was suspected of having murdered his wife, was unjustly condemned, and ordered to leave the city. He took refuge in Valencia, and entered the Carthusian convent so as to be able to devote himself wholly to painting, which henceforth occupied him to the exclusion of sculpture.