Peter Carl Fabergé (Russian, 1846-1920), Henrik Wigström (Russian, 1862-1923, House of Fabergé (Russian, 1842-1918)
Below the image, click play to listen.
Oil on panel, c. 1610, branded on reverse with the seal of Antwerp Guild of St. Luke
Flemish, 1577–1640
So they took Jesus, and He went out, bearing His own cross, to the place called The Place of the Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. There they crucified Him, and with Him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them. John 19:17,18
Christ on the Cross is one of M&G’s better-known paintings, due in part to the great master who created it. Peter Paul Rubens was born in Seigen, Germany and reared Roman Catholic. At age 12, his family returned to Antwerp, where he received a classical education, typical of the influence of Renaissance Humanism. In the Netherlands, he more than likely apprenticed under the leading artists of the day including Tobias Verhaect, Adam van Noort, and Otto van Veen. By 1598, he obtained the status of a master painter and entered the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke, similar to a union for artists.
To continue his training, he moved to Italy two years later, where exposure to masterworks by artists like da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian, and Caravaggio further influenced his developing style. During his eight years on the peninsula, he completed commissions for nobility and churches in both Italy and Spain, spending much of his time serving the Duke of Mantua. By the time he returned to Antwerp in 1609 his renown as an artist preceded him. In his lifetime he filled hundreds of commissions, served as a court painter (in Italy and the Netherlands), diplomat, and ambassador.
As the head of a large studio, he employed as many as three hundred assistants to help him meet the commissions he received from European kings and aristocracy. His workshop included artists who specialized in certain parts of a painting’s composition such as animals, flowers, or physical features. Although, Rubens most likely often painted the hands, feet, or faces of individuals. One of his best-known students is Anthony van Dyck, also represented in M&G’s collection. Rubens’ pageant-like paintings represent the apex of the High Baroque style. He stands as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, baroque artists of the Golden Age.
According to several specialists, M&G’s painting is recognized as one of Ruben’s better works. Likely, this work was a modello or prototype that would be referenced by an assistant to copy and complete a larger, commissioned version, which may explain some of the unfinished elements such as the absence of the crown of thorns and writing above Christ’s head.
Additionally, some stylistic features are distinctive to this specific painting including the single cross instead of three and a nail for each appendage. However, Christ’s position with his arms spread upward instead of outward represents a turning point in Christian iconography. In an exhibition catalog, former North Carolina Curator David Steel, explains Rubens’ novel depiction: “Rubens’ Christ suffers heroically, his muscles tense, his fingers clenched, and his arms raised almost straight above his head, thrusting his torso outward. This image emphasizes the physical sacrifice which Christ suffered on behalf of mankind, yet his upward straining, restated in the staves below, suggests his ultimate triumph.”
Of the three crosses on Golgotha, Christ was in the middle, the place reserved for the most notorious of lawbreakers. Rubens presents Christ, the perfect Son of God, as the singular focus of punishment and suffering, which the Apostle Paul emphasizes in II Corinthians 5:21, “He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” Meditate and marvel at the wonder of God’s crucified and resurrected Son during this Easter season!
John Good, Security Manager and Docent
Published in 2020
Vasiliy Fedotovich Il’in and D. Tverskoy
Below the image, click play to listen.
Oil on canvas
Dutch, c. 1597-1622
And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!
Matthew 27:29
Artist David de Haen is the creator of this interesting canvas, which is called a lunette due to its half-moon shape. The painting is a variant copy painted by the artist of the original subject (and same shape) created for the Pietà Chapel in San Pietro de Montorio in Rome. The original lunette was designed to hang above the large altarpiece depicting Christ on The Way to Calvary. The church has multiple small chapels decorated by various prominent Italian painters from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; however, two seventeenth-century Dutch painters are also represented, and de Haen is one of them.
De Haen was born in Amsterdam sometime around 1597 and lived very briefly—just 25 years—with much of his time spent in Rome. Before his death in 1622, he created some notable works including the Entombment, which was destroyed in Berlin during World War II. The commission for the Pieta Chapel was shared with Dirck van Baburen, an artist also represented in M&G’s collection with St. Sebastian Aided by St. Irene. Both de Haen and Baburen were influenced by Caravaggio’s dramatic style. After his time in Rome, Baburen returned home to Utrecht, where he is credited as a key influencer of the Utrecht Caravaggisti—a group of artists following Caravaggio’s well-known trademarks of realistic representations of people and stark contrast of brilliantly lit scenes against darkly shadowed settings.
Dr. Jones Jr., M&G’s founder, acquired the painting for the Collection in 1986 and explained his fortuitous find, “It came up in an auction at Christie’s, and I noticed in the catalog that, when I measured it and checked the proportions, they exactly fit the end of the room (Gallery 5); so I bought it and put it here, although it is later than the other pictures in th[at] small gallery.”
A closer study of M&G’s painting reveals two men mocking Christ; both are dressed in period clothing of de Haen’s day. Two, less obvious individuals are seen in the background and could possibly represent Pilate and Herod or Caiaphas and his father-in-law Annas. The bench on which Christ is seated may allude to the stone slab that will ultimately entomb Him. The stone’s sculptural relief is similar to carvings found on Roman marble and limestone sarcophagi, which sometimes depicted narratives from the person’s life.
As you enter this Easter season, consider these words written by one of His closest followers, the apostle Peter: “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit” (I Peter 3:18).
John Good, Security Manager and Docent
For Further Study:
Published in 2020
Edwin Long, R. A.
Below the image, click play to listen.
Walnut
Florentine, early 16th century
For a mundane piece of furniture with such a simplistic design as to be easily transportable, this folding chair bears the name of a big personality and has allowed countless VIPs to rest and rule simultaneously.
Girolamo Savonarola was a monk and religious reformer in Florence, Italy. He came to the Medici’s city in 1481 to serve at the Dominican monastery and church of San Marco (St. Mark). He proved to be honest and sincere, and he studied and memorized Scripture, which he applied practically to everyday living for himself and in his teaching. His preaching was passionate and dramatic, and he spoke against corruption in the church and papacy. His influence for morality and reform held popular support for a while, even garnering respect from Lorenzo, the Magnificent. Eventually, however, Savonarola was bitterly opposed by Rome. The pope enforced excommunication, suspension of the sacraments from the faithful, and a ban of trade, which affected Florence’s prosperous economy. Ultimately, the Florentines turned on him too, and Savonarola was sentenced to death. He was hanged and his body burned in the town square in 1498—just seventeen years after his arrival.
Shaped in the frame of an X, this Italian Renaissance Savonarola Chair is one of a few in M&G’s collection. The chair is constructed of walnut and is considered “unusual” by furniture expert Joseph Aronson because it only has five pairs of the thick, pivoted S-shaped strips of wood to hold the hinged seat. Normally, a chair like this might have six, eight, or even twelve pairs. However, these five rung pairs are each held together at the floor with a trestle for sturdiness, and the pairs are joined at the top by heavy arms with carved rosettes. The back of the chair is a modest board, which is attached loosely—easily removed when the chair needs to be folded.
The chair style has had many names through the centuries and geographical regions including the X-chair, curule, faldstool, scissors chair, Dante chair, and Luther chair. Because of its unique design, the chair traces its roots and practical service back to antiquity. A visual record exists of Egyptian Pharoah Tut’ankhamun sitting in the chair. Roman senators and consuls used a backless version of these portable seats, and in Romanesque and Gothic illuminations the kings of France are perched on it.
With Italy’s interest in Greek and Roman culture and thought, the Renaissance also revived awareness in the architecture and design from antiquity including furniture. One writer explains the era as “an exhibition of emancipated modern genius fired and illuminated by the masterpieces of the past.” During the awakening, the chair’s status of power continues in the pictorial records of seated bishops, emperors, and popes. Artists also rendered respected religious individuals in the chair such as St. Ambrose and Christ’s mother Mary.
The Museum of San Marco preserves and features the fifteenth-century Dominican monastery where Fra Angelico was Prior and who decorated many of the monk’s cells and interior spaces with beautiful frescoes. Girolamo Savonarola became the monastery’s Prior in 1491 and occupied three cells that today still display a few of his personal items, including a folding X-chair in his study and similar chairs in other parts of the museum.
However, it wasn’t until nearly 400 years after his torturous death that the chair became associated with Savonarola specifically. In 1878, Florentine sculptor Giovanni Biggi created for the church at San Marco a bronze statue of the monk sitting pensively in an X-shaped chair.
Erin R. Jones, Executive Director
Additional Reading:
Published in 2020
Weaver of the Hezekiah Series
Brussels, c. 1530
Below the image, click play to listen.
Polychrome and giltwood
17th century
The obsessive attention to realistic detail and heightened emotion that characterized many 17th-century paintings is also evident in this dramatic polychrome sculpture. The adjective polychrome (meaning “many colored”) refers to the color on the wood which enhances the figure’s lifelikeness. Although this technique can be traced back to the Greeks and Romans, it became particularly popular during the Renaissance. Spanish sculptors who preferred wood to stone became especially adept at using the technique, often adding “gilding and brilliantly imaginative lusters.”
Jerome, the subject of this work, was born in the fourth century in the small town of Stridon (located in the Balkans today). Initially schooled by his father, he later traveled to Rome where he became proficient in Latin and Greek and excelled in oratory. His later biographical writings lament that this early success encouraged in him an overweening pride and ambition. He continued his education in Trier, a German city on the banks of the Moselle river. It was here that his Christian conscience was reawakened, and as one source notes, “his heart was entirely converted to God.” However, by his own admission his competitive nature and “rambling imagination” continued to trouble him throughout life. He lived in the desert of Chalcis for several years but eventually returned to Rome in 382 to become special secretary to Pope Damasus I. It was Damasus who assigned him the task of creating a revised Latin version of the Bible. The Vulgate, as it is known, was completed in 405. Jerome eventually retired to a monastery in Bethlehem where he died in 420.
As is typical of the era the creator of this work uses numerous attributes to identify the figure and to illustrate his story. For example, the books stacked on the rock and supporting the aged Jerome represent his writings (most notably the Vulgate but also his other letters and theological treatises). The skull resting atop two of the books signifies the transience of life or natural death; notice however, that Jerome is turning away from “death” to gaze heavenward–the source of new, eternal life. The brilliant red cloak “embroidered” with fleur de lis seems rather out of place in the wilderness setting. However, in this context it represents Jerome’s office as a cardinal. Although, the position of cardinal did not exist in the early centuries of the church, ecclesiastics of Rome, like Jerome, held the duties that later fell to cardinals.
One other imaginative story connected to Jerome and recorded in The Golden Legend occurs during his retirement in Bethlehem. According to this story, as the monks were going about their daily routine, a wounded lion suddenly appeared. All fled but Jerome. Examining the beast, he discovered and removed a thorn that was deeply embedded in its paw. In gratitude the lion became Jerome’s constant companion and protector of the monastery. This beautifully carved attribute “rounds out” the base of the sculpture.
Donnalynn Hess, M&G Director of Education
Published in 2020
Master of the Borghese Tondo
Below the image, click play to listen.
Oil on panel
Flemish, c 1500-1560
As his name states, Jan Swart came from the town of Groningen in the Netherlands. No documents tell of his training, but this painting depicts his fondness for showing people in unusual headgear. It also reveals his other work as a book illustrator. Here Swart pictures the central truth of Christ’s coming into the world, placed within the context of His early life.
M&G’s Triptych (three panels) illustrates three events in Christ’s early life: the Nativity, Adoration of the Magi, and the Flight into Egypt. The birth of Christ signified the coming of a new covenant—a covenant that forever removed the necessary demand of the Old Testament Law requiring atonement for sin before the joy of reunification and fellowship with God.
Swart unifies the three stories of the triptych through a key motif: broken architectural elements. The left panel (clearly the stable with a curious cow in the background) has the Christ-child lying on a manger of ornate stone, possibly the base of a larger pillar. But the broken pillar at the base of the marble manger (right foreground) catches the viewer’s attention because its decoration is too fine to be part of a stable and because it matches all the other pillars, especially the broken one in the foreground of the Adoration. In the Flight, the Madonna and Child are resting on a pillar’s base by the side of the road. In each panel then, Swart uses the broken columns to point to Christ’s reason for coming to earth.
However, Swart develops his illustration of the Scriptures even more, specifically within the large, middle panel. The Adoration is central to an understanding of that New Covenant that Christ came to establish. To appreciate his storytelling, one must carefully consider the motif of the number 3.
Three in Composition
Swart adorns the frame of the middle panel with a trefoil centered over the Madonna and Child. This iconography tells the viewer that the scenes are the story of the One God in Three Persons, the Trinity of which Christ is the second Person. Swart then emphasizes this truth through more tripling in the work. There are three openings in the room, which is clearly not a stable. In doing so he follows the same Scriptural distinction that the Magi came to “the house where the young child was.” Interestingly, each opening emphasizes a key character in the story:
Three Gifts
Swart does not include Joseph in this panel, though Christ’s earthly father is often part of this family scene. The reason is that the focus is on the heavenly family of the Christ. The three gifts of the magi emphasize a different family than that of Joseph’s.
Christ’s lineage through Joseph is that of the kings of Israel, perhaps another reason that he is not present: Christ’s royal claim to these kingly gifts relies on His eternal lineage, not that of His earthly father’s.
Three Magi
The three holders of the gifts are also interesting to note. Those held by the two Magi on the side are urn shape, commensurate with their gifts of oil. Logically then, the wide-mouthed lidded bowl offered by the central magus is the gold: the kneeling pose and the type of gift indicate the submissiveness of a subject to a king. Christ’s pose and gesture indicate His position as both king and priest in extending a blessing to His subjects.
Three Columns
The three ornate pillars within the middle panel are interesting as they are in differing conditions. The pillar in the foreground matches the one in the stable. But the other two frame the Christ and His mother. Perhaps Swart is showing the progressive nature of the New Covenant’s institution. One column is broken, another is empty, and the third fulfills its purpose. Christ must be born, die, and resurrect in order to complete the New Covenant. Swart again uses the number three to tell the story of Christ, even as an infant, has set in motion the redemption of the world.
Dr. Karen Rowe, M&G Board Member
Published in 2019
M&G at BOB JONES UNIVERSITY; 1700 Wade Hampton Blvd - Greenville, SC 29614
