My prior Art posts can be found HERE.
How do we move away from being a civilization that produces art that causes comments like, “my five year old could make this,” back to being one that creates beauty and inspires deep questions? We must reject modernity and embrace tradition. To embrace tradition, we must first learn about it.
Let’s study art history together.
Gethsemane
| Artist | Carl Bloch |
|---|---|
| Year | c. 1873 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 104 cm (40.9 in) x 83 cm (32.6 in) |
| Location | National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen |
You’ll have to forgive me for a minute, as I side trail away from the painting (in a direct sense at least) because I have always been probably a little over-interested in Jesus’s wardrobe. It’s one of those topics that feels to me like it conceals a bit of truth that might now be lost to us. For example – as demonstrated beautifully in this painting – Jesus is painted wearing red. Depicting Christ in red (or sometimes blue, but usually red) is a long-standing Christian art tradition. You see it going all the way back to the earliest days of Christian art and iconography. (The paintings of His Mother are alike in this way.)
There are actually a lot of art history articles on this topic (one HERE, for example) and the usually consensus in the art world is that the color choices are symbolic. However, there is an incident in the Gospels that makes me wonder:
Matthew 27:35 When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots.
Mark 15:24 And they crucified him. Dividing up his clothes, they cast lots to see what each would get
John 19: 23 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.
24 “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.”[a]So this is what the soldiers did.
If you apply just a bit of logic, shouldn’t there be a reason (other than pure malice) that the soldiers wanted His clothing? The most obvious is that it was valuable. Was Christ dressed unusually well – so much so that soldiers would consider His clothes valuable enough to want and divide between them like it was treasure? It seems so. The text in John describes his robe as seemless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. The description implies it was unique.
Subsequent Church history has produced competing traditions regarding these clothes and a few different places around the world purport to possess the relics of Christ’s clothes to this very day.
That does beg a question, though. If Christ had expensive clothing, how did He come by them? The Church usually spends time discussing the poverty of Jesus. He was born in a manger. During the time of His ministry, He had no place to lay his head. There is another very well known text, though, that tends to be forgotten in the context of discussing Christ’s personal financial resources:
Matthew 22:11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Isaiah 60:6 Herds of camels will cover your land, young camels of Midian and Ephah. And all from Sheba will come, bearing gold and incense and proclaiming the praise of the Lord.
What if God the Father did not leave His son to grow up in poverty? What if – as the text says – the Holy Family was given a valuable treasure? In that case, Jesus might really have had expensive clothing. Does that make a difference? I don’t know. It might change the context of the New Testament a bit. Maybe a wealthy Rabbi, with large crowds following Him, was perceived as more threatening than an impoverished one would have been? Or perhaps Christ had more travel and educational opportunities when He was young than we might otherwise assume with an assumption of life-long poverty. Or perhaps personal wealth helped to fund some of His ministry’s logistics? Or perhaps it paid for the care of His Mother after the Crucifixion? We don’t know.
But back to the painting…
I really love the way Bloch paints Christ’s face with grief and agony, and how it contrasts with the compassion on the face of the angel. Christ’s human nature feels very much in reach, in this work, to me as a viewer. I also love the color juxtaposition of Christ’s crimson red clothes, and lighter purple behind him, against the angel’s ethereal and almost glowing white. Then both of them together contrast beautifully with the black night sky behind them. Visually it’s really captivating.
An interesting note about Bloch’s religious artwork generally is that despite being a Danish Lutheran, his religious work is now very much synonymous with the United States based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. For decades, the LDS Church has produced its own art relying on Bloch’s work as a model. This connection comes from a specific source, an LDS missionary and writer named Doyle Green.
No one (or at least nothing I’ve been able to find) knows precisely why Green encouraged this connection, but it is generally believed that Bloch’s Protestant avoidance of traditional Catholic art motifs helped make the LDS community comfortable with these depictions of Christ. In any case, it goes to show that once you put art into the world, you never really know where it will end up. I’m sure Bloch never imagined his religious artwork being aligned with the Latter-Day Saints.
This is a brilliant and beautiful painting, from a true 19th century master.
