Blog

Art has the power to teach us something new about the mundane in life.  Sometimes art portrays the beautiful, sometimes the ugly.  This past fall when I had the opportunity to walk through several museums in the Netherlands and Germany, I came across four paintings that presented the biblical account of the crucifixion of Christ in unexpected or at least different ways.  They present four artist perspectives from painters who lived in four different centuries.
Perhaps the oldest Crucifixion image that entranced me while visiting museums last fall was a painting done in 1512 by Hans Baldung, The Crucifixion.  I found it in the Gemaldegalerie museum Berlin, Germany.  Partially, I was caught off guard by the interpretation of the cross being an actual tree stump instead of a slab of wood.   The closer I looked the more I captivated I was in the anguished face of the girl who clung to the foot of the cross.  This is most likely a portrayal of Mary Magdalene who is often portrayed in medieval Christian art as a symbol of a penitent sinner.  Her emotion and posture attracted me to this particular image.

There was a series of paintings that Rembrandt van Rijn did concerning the life of Christ in the Alte Pinakothek Museum in Munich, Germany.  I may mention the series later, but one in the series was of the crucifixion.  This painting is interesting because it captures the moment when the cross is hoisted into an upright position.  While two thugs push and pull it into place,  there is a third figure bracing the cross.  The third figure is a self-portrait of Rembrandt.  He is placing himself among the others who are crucifying Christ.  He is saying that he, like them, is a sinner.

(Rembrandt is in the center near Christ’s feet)

While wondering through Het Rembrandthuis Museum, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands last autumn, a painting caught my eye.  The walls of the Rembrandt House were covered with paintings salon style, and although it was hard for the eye to isolate any image, this particular painting caught my attention and held it.  The painting, The Last Supper, by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout (1664) , was on loan to The Rembrandt House Museum from the Rijksmuseum.  The painting resembles Rembrandt’s style because the artist was not only a pupil but also a friend of Rembrandt.  Another interesting thing about the painting was the  way that the artist reinterpreted the subject matter.
The tone of  “The Last Supper” is very intimate.  This is a common subject matter for classical artists, and Eeckhout paints it in an intimate manner that may have been influenced by Rembrandt’s The Supper at Emmaus (1648).  The setting is similar.  Both images have an intimacy to them.  The lighting that shuts the edges of the canvas out of the scene creates this intimacy.  Also, in each painting, there are people in the painting that have their back to the viewer.  This closes the group in the painting and makes us who are viewing the scene feel like we are outsiders.  I have always imagined that the last supper would have been an intimate gathering and not a staged scene where all members are following stage rules and not allowing their backs to be toward the audience.

The Last Supper, Gerbrand van den Eeckhout

The Supper at Emmaus, Rembrandt Van Rijn