Van Gogh Museum Journal 1997-1998

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fig. 1
Jean-Léon Gérôme, Golgotha (‘Consummatum est’), c. 1868, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum

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Shadows over Jean-Léon Gérôme's career
Fred Leeman

After his first trip to Egypt in 1858 the Dutch artist Willem de Famars Testas (1834-1896) decided to specialise in Orientalism. A number of other Dutch painters, such as Cornelis Kruseman and Ary Scheffer, had already seized the opportunity to explore eastern subjects, but Testas's long stays in the East provided him with more material than others for a specialised career.¹ On his return he exhibited paintings with exotic themes at Kunstliefde in Utrecht and at the annual Leevende Meesters exhibitions. Through his work he came into contact with the Goupil gallery, and also aroused the interest of Jean-Léon Gérôme, the most eminent French Orientalist, who was married to Marie Goupil, a daughter of the firm's founder.

1 For a global overview see Ronald de Leeuw, ‘Nederlandse oriëntalisten,’ Jong Holland 1 (1985), no. 3, pp. 10-36. For information on De Famars Testas, see Maarten J. Raven (ed.), Willem de Famars Testas: De schilderskaravaan. 1868, Leiden 1992, pp. 1-6.

The journey to Jerusalem

When Gérôme organised a group for a new expedition to the Levant in 1868, Testas was one of those invited to go along. The party comprised six artists, pupils of Goupil's, but also the already celebrated Léon Bonnat. Albert Goupil, Gérôme's brother-in-law, accompanied the expedition as the official photographer (fig. 2). They even went as far as to reserve one of the seven camels in the caravan for the exclusive transport of his equipment. The destinations were Egypt and Palestine, and Testas and the party arrived in Alexandria in the middle of January 1868. On 3 April, after an adventurous journey through Egypt and the Sinai, the group approached the gates of Jerusalem from Hebron in the south. ‘The first glimpse of Jerusalem was gripping,’ Testas related in his travel notes, ‘the sun-illuminated city was silhouetted against a violet thundery light, whilst the outlying land lay under the shadow of clouds.’²

During the following days, close to Palm Sunday, the party visited the Holy City, and on 7 April Testas accompanied Gérôme, Bonnat, Lenoir and Barthélémy on a climb up the Mount of Olives on its eastern flank. At the top of the mount they visited the Chapel of the Ascension, ‘where one is shown a footprint set in stone that is professed to have been made by the foot of Jesus.’ Apparently the weather had cleared up because Testas noted in his diary that ‘from the top of the mount one is blessed with a fantastic view of Jerusalem [...].’³ The panorama from the

fig. 2
Albert Goupil, Notre groupe, from the Album B. Journault, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France

2 Willem de Famars Testas, cit. (note 1), p. 115. For the - original - French text of the diary (Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden) see exhib. cat. Album de voyage des artistes en expédition au pays du Levant, Tel-Aviv (Museum of Art), Bayonne (Musée Bonnat) & Paris (Musée Hébert) 1993, p. 156: ‘Le premier aspect de Jérusalem était saississant: la ville éclairée par le soleil, se détachait sur un ciel d'orage violet, le paysage environnant enveloppée dans l'ombre des nuages.’

3 Album de voyage, cit. (note 2), p. 158: ‘Au sommet, nous avons visité la chapelle de l'ascension où on montre une empreinte de pied dans une pierre qu'on dit avoir été imprimé par le pied de Jésus. Du haut de la montagne, on jouit d'une vue magnifique sur Jérusalem [...].’

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Mount of Olives was already a popular subject for photographers such as the Frenchman Felix Bonfils, who had settled in Beirut in 1867. His panorama, covering three plates, gives a good impression of the view of Jerusalem the painters would have been presented with (fig. 3).⁴ At the foot of the slopes of the Mount of Olives there is a glimpse the Kidron Valley with, behind it, the long straight section of the city wall built by Suleiman the Magnificent, intersected on the right by a double gate, the so-called Golden Gate. Above the crenellation rises the Mosque of Omar on the Temple Mount.

Albert Goupil also made photographic studies of the Holy Land.⁵ Some of these became the models for the wood engravings illustrating the travel account of one of the expedition members, Paul Lenoir. Albert was an amateur photographer, not a professional, and this may explain why conventions of composition and lighting derived from the fine art of painting are often absent in his work. The Bibliothèque Nationale recently acquired an album of 77 plates of photographs made by Goupil during this expedition.⁶

The painters put up a good show, too, particularly Gérôme. One of the expedition members described with great admiration how every day, as soon as the camp had been set up, he could be seen ‘commencing a study - neither rain nor wind having the power to move him from his camping stool.’⁷ At least one of the studies Gérôme made in situ in Jerusalem has been preserved: a view of the city from the west in clear weather (fig. 4). It was here, in front of the Jaffa gate, that the company pitched their tents on 3 April. On a previous visit, at Easter in 1862, the painter described the area outside the city as follows: ‘The surroundings are desolate, stones everywhere, sparse vegetation, crooked olive trees bent double by the wind, but the region is by no means commonplace, once seen it is

fig. 3
Felix Bonfils, Panoramic view of Jerusalem, after 1867, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet

never forgotten.’⁸ Four years earlier, it seems, the expedition had also been plagued by stormy weather.

On 12 April, loaded down with studies, Gérôme bade the group an early farewell to return to France. Apparently he wanted to be back in time for the opening of the Salon, in which two of his works were to be exhibited: Jérusalem and The 7th of December 1815, nine o'clock in the morning, better known as The execution of Marshall Ney (fig. 6). The former has recently been added to the collection of the Musée d'Orsay, while the Van Gogh Museum acquired a smaller version of the same composition in 1995 (fig. 1).

4 See Will H. Rockett, ‘The Bonfils story: a legacy of light,’ Aramco World (November-December 1983). The Panorama de Jérusalem shown here is attributed to Felix Bonfils on the basis of the plate-number (298). The reproductions are from a collection of photographs of the Middle East once belonging to Richard Polak (Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet, inv. no. 54A2). See also below, footnote 9.

5 Albert Goupil (1840-1884), son of Adolphe, the founder of the firm, is primarily known as a collector of oriental works of art. He transformed his house at 7, Rue Chaptel into an exotic palace. The illustrations from the catalogue of the auction held after his death give an impression of the richness of his collection: Objets d'art et de l'orient et de l'occident. Tableaux, dessins composant la collection de feu M. Albert Goupil, Paris (Hôtel Drouot), 28 April 1888.

6 This album once belonged to one of the expedition's participants, the painter Ernest Journault. As late as 1993 the compilers of the Album de voyage catalogue (cit. [note 2]) regretted the fact that none of Albert Goupil's photographs of the 1868 expedition had survived. With thanks to Pierre-Lin Renié, curator at the Musée Goupil in Bordeaux, who drew my attention to the existence of this album.

7 Frédéric Masson, ‘J.-L. Gérôme, peintre de l'Orient,’ Le Figaro Illustré (July 1901). English translation from Fanny Hering, Life and works of Jean Léon Gérôme, New York 1892, p. 28.

8 See Gerald M. Ackerman, ‘Jean-Léon Gérôme, à cinquante ans, dresse le bilan de sa propre carrière: son autobiographie, rédigée en 1874,’ Bulletin de la Société d' Agriculture, Lettres, Sciences et Arts de Haute Saone 14 (1980), p. 15: ‘Le caractère de la contrée est désolant, des pierres partout, une végétation maigre, des olivers à formers rachitiques, tourmentés par la tempête, mais ce n' est pas un pays banal, et quand on l' a vu, on ne saurait l'oublier.’ This article reproduces the manuscript of the autobiographical notes the artist made for the painter and art critic Charles Timbal, who published a critical biography of Gérôme in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1878.

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Gérôme's ‘Jérusalem’

Jérusalem shows a rocky mount in the foreground, brightly illuminated by the low-lying sun, on which the shadows of three crosses can be seen. A procession of mounted- and foot-soldiers moves in a long winding line down the hill and through the valley to the double city gate. Above the city walls, exactly in the middle of the canvas, rises the Temple, it, too, illuminated by the low-lying sun. In view of the short period of time between his departure from Jaffa and the opening of the Salon (2 May), Gérôme must have completed the greater part of the larger version before leaving for the Middle East.

Gérôme's Orientalist paintings were renowned for their documentary precision, their attention to detail and the smooth manner in which they were painted. As Paul Lenoir later wrote: ‘one could say that his paintings are



photographic, if photography were an art.’⁹ In an article of 1868 Emile Galichon noted: ‘nobody can boast as photographic an eye as Gérôme.’¹⁰ Indeed, a kind of ‘photo realism’ does appear to underlie this rather exceptional religious painting. This is not only due to the way the Crucifixion has been painted - all signs of a personal touch have been expelled - but also to the apparently extraordinary effort put into achieving historical and topographical accuracy. On the one hand, there was the individual, physical experience of the painter, who has actually seen and felt the landscape around Jerusalem; on the other, there was the strong urge for historical exactitude, which not only forced him to create a faithful, archaeologically reliable reconstruction of the details in his painting, but also to break with the age-old iconographic traditions of Christian imagery. However, Gérôme has made the au-

9 Paul Lenoir, Le Fayoum, Le Sinaï et Pétra. Expédition dans la moyenne Egypte et l'Arabie pétrée sous la direction de J.L. Gérôme, Paris 1872, introduction: ‘on pourrait dire que ses tableaux sont de la photographie, si la photographie était un art.’ Unfortunately Lenoir's account ends in Hebron, so the visit to Jerusalem is not included. Of course, we cannot be certain if Gérôme actually used photographs for Jérusalem, whether by Bonfils or others. There were certainly numerous photogaphs of the area in existence, such as those by Auguste Salzmann (Jérusalem. Etude et reproduction photographique des monuments de la Ville Sainte depuis l'époque judaique jusqu'à nos jours, 2 vols., Paris 1856); Francis Frith (Sinai and Palestine photographed, London [1857]); Frank Mason Good (1866-67); and William von Herford (1856-57). None of these panoramas, however, comes anywhere near as close to Gérôme's painting as Bonfils's (see fig. 3). With thanks to Mattie Boom, Curator of Photography at the Rijksprentenkabinet, for tracing these pictures.

10 Emile Galichon, ‘M. Gérôme. Peintre ethnographe,’ Gazette des Beaux-Arts 24 (February 1868), p. 151: ‘nul ne peut se flatter d'avoir l'oeil photographique de M. Gérôme.’

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thenticity of both time and place secondary to a theatrical presentation, the elements of which are unthinkable without the work of the photographer - a constant presence on his trips.

The bare hilltop in the foreground is based on the study Gérôme painted at the site (fig. 4). The rocks depicted were in fact to the west of Jerusalem, outside the Lion's Gate, whilst the Salon painting shows Jerusalem from the east, looking towards the Temple Mount. The painter has thus transported them to the other side of the city. The bare hill upon which the three crosses cast their shadows, crowned by skull-like stones, cannot, therefore, be Golgotha. Even though the precise historical location of the ‘Skull Hill’ is unclear, it is known to have been somewhere northwest of the city, that is, near the place where Gérôme had first found his boulders. Entirely contrary to both topographical reality and historical tradition, the hill in the painting must then be the Mount of Olives, at the foot of which the Garden of Olives, Gethsemane, was to be found. This anomaly becomes even more remarkable if one considers that the painter had climbed the Mount himself and described the surroundings in his diary. Presumably, he even had photographs of the panorama at his disposal, like those taken by Bonfils (fig. 3), as details such as the shadows on the city wall and the cypress trees on the Temple Mount are faithfully reproduced in the painting.

Strangely enough, the low-lying sun which causes the crosses to cast their shadows is positioned in the northeast in the painting, nicely in keeping with the shadow-effects on the rock mass. The crescent moon can be pinpointed as somewhere in the northwest. According to the Gospels Jesus died at three o'clock in the afternoon; the sky darkened in broad daylight and the sun and the moon shone at the same time.¹¹ Twice Gérôme had been welcomed by stormy weather on his arrival in Jerusalem and if this did not provide him with the idea for his painting, it certainly supplied him with the visual information necessary for its dramatic lighting. The description of the stormy skies in Testas's travel notes shows a particularly striking resemblance to the purple light of the painting.

Two Roman soldiers dressed in white tunics turn around to look at the crosses, their hands raised as if in a gesture of farewell, or perhaps only to shade their eyes from the sinking sun. According to Christian tradition these must be the first converts: the centurion Longinus,

fig. 4
Jean-Léon Gérôme, View of Jerusalem, 1864, courtesy Shepherd Gallery, Associates, New York

who pierced Jesus's side but later recognised him to be the Son of God, and the soldier Stephaton, who gave Him the sponge drenched in vinegar. Half way up the hill we see the Venus Temple which, according various Church Fathers, had been built on this site by the Romans.¹² The background is dominated by the Temple of Jerusalem.

Moving ‘Golgotha’ to the other side of Jerusalem enabled Gérôme to have the Crucifixion take place on a spectacular hill outside the city, just as religious tradition dictated.¹³ Against the perspective of this grand panorama the painter was able to present it as an overwhelming event of cosmic proportions. The gigantic shadows cast by the three crosses accentuate the minuteness of the powerful Temple in the distance. The threatening storm seems to announce its impending destruction.¹⁴ Gérôme was conscious of the fact that he had invented a radical new way of presenting the biblical scene ‘[...] at odds with the old, respectable traditions.’¹⁵

This was not the only time Gérôme employed shadows as a means of indicating an ominous presence. In a canvas of the same period entitled Oedipus (fig. 5) - a title chosen to suggest profound reflection - we see Napoleon on horseback, a solitary figure in front of the Sphinx of Giza. His escort has not been included in the picture, but their silhouettes can be seen in the sand behind him. The addition of ‘accidental’ shadows of this type was probably

11 Matt. 27:45; Mark 15:33; Luke 23:44-45: ‘And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst.’

12 See Ernest Renan, Vie de Jésus, Paris 1974 [1st ed. 1863], p. 397, note 9.

13 Ibid.

14 In Christian iconography it was customary to contrast the triumphant figure of Ecclesia, the New Covenant at the foot of the cross, with Synagogue, representing the Old Covenant, with a falling crown and the broken staff of the Old Testament. See, for example, Emile Mâle, L'art réligieux en France au XIIIe siècle, Paris 1910, p. 227, fig. 100.

15 Ackerman, op. cit. (note 8), p. 16: ‘C'était rompre avec les traditions antiques et vénérées.’

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fig. 5
Jean-Léon Gérôme, Oedipus, 1867-68, San Simeon, Hearst Castle

suggested to the painter by photography. The a-selective camera lens can only record what is there, and cannot choose between essential and arbitrary phenomena. Gérôme has made a virtue of necessity and put this typical photographic ‘defect’ to good use, thereby allowing his scene to gain in realistic expressivity.

Another dramatic device often found in Gérôme's work is represented by the extreme foreshortening of the shadows of the three crosses contrasted with the departing crowd. The execution of Marshall Ney (fig. 6), exhibited at the same time as Jérusalem, was considered by Gérôme himself to be ‘very different in style and design.’¹⁶ Ackerman has quite rightly argued, however, that there are nonetheless a great number of parallels between the two works, and that both refer to the renowned Death of Caesar, the first version of which, it is true, dated back to 1859 but of which a still more detailed version had been carried out for the Exposition Universelle of 1867 (Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery). In both cases the body of the executed victim is shown in extreme forshortening in the foreground, while the executioners - small, insignificant figures - make their exit. The focus is not the dramatic climax of the event, but the moment afterwards. The person looking at the scene is made witness to an historical development whose pre-history and outcome he already knows. The killing of the protagonists is implied, but by concentrating on its aftermath the artist conjures up the eminence of the victims and the consequences of their deaths for world history. By eliminating their physical presence, the murderers, or those who gave the orders, believed they could destroy the spirits of their victims.

With these dramatic entries to the Salon of 1868, Gérôme created a distinct image of himself as a history painter tackling the most serious and elevated subjects. It is evident that The execution of Marshall Ney is Gérôme's answer to Manet's shocking Execution of Emperor Maximillian (Mannheim, Städtische Kunstsammlungen). Manet worked on this painting - an indictment of

16 Ibid.

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fig. 6
Jean-Léon Gérôme, The execution of Marshall Ney, 1867, Sheffield, Sheffield City Art Galleries

Emperor Napoleon III's disastrous Mexican adventure - at about the same time.¹⁷ Presumably Gérôme hoped that his picture, by contrast, would be greeted with enthusiasm by the Bonapartists. After Waterloo, Ney - who had joined the emperor's forces in 1815 when Napoleon returned from Elba - was sentenced to death for treason by a reactionary court. Three of his sons served in Napoleon III's army, so a warm welcome for the painting might have been expected. Gérôme's intentions, however, backfired. One of the sons, the Duc d'Enghien, begged the powerful Surintendant des Beaux-Arts, Nieuwerkerke, to remove the work from the exhibition, probably because its realistic depiction - Ney is shown lying face-down in the mud - was deemed disrespectful. Gérôme noted proudly that he had remained steadfast in his refusal to comply, remarking that ‘painters have the right to write history with their brushes, just as writers do with their pens.’¹⁸ The painting provoked extremely contradictory reactions: the Legitimists accused him of flattering the imperial regime, whilst the Bonapartists denounced his unbridled ambition.

Gérôme's patently obvious attempts to flatter those in power elicited the scorn of the cartoonist Gill. He published a caricature of Jérusalem in his Salon pour Rire of 1868 (fig. 7) in which the shadows of the crosses have been given the shape of the insignia of knighthood. The caption runs: ‘This painting, the first to attract the attention of the crowds which gather by the entrance, is understood to be a rebus, a picture puzzle, etc. Nevertheless it is as simple as can be. A few crosses cast their shadows on a poor painting. With this M. Gérôme has clearly tried to show that nothing is more damaging to art than the sort of reward that is administered haphazardly.’ The fact that the basic idea for The execution of Marshall Ney already been used repeatedly in Gérôme's work, and was ultimately drawn from his Death of Caesar, was treated by Gill in an hilarious series of caricatures entitled Décès célèbres, which concluded with the death of the painter himself.

17 Manet wanted to exhibit this painting at the Salon of 1869, but he was given to understand that it would be rejected on the grounds of its anti-imperialism. During the two years Manet worked on the painting 's various versions it must have been known in artistic circles; see exhib. cat. Manet, Paris (Grand Palais) & New York (Metropolitan Museum) 1983, pp. 529-31. Gérôme's blind wall also plays an important role in the Manet. For a different view of the relationship between Gérôme's and Manet's work see Juliet Wilson-Bareau et al., exhib. cat. Painting, politics, censorhip, London (National Gallery) 1992, pp. 101-02. The use of the execution date in the ‘official’ titles of both works is reminiscent of Goya's Third of May 1808 (Madrid, Museo del Prado). Ackerman was the first to point out the competition between Gérôme and Manet: see ‘Gérôme et Manet,’ Gazette de Beaux-Arts 70 (September 1967), pp. 169-70.

18 Ackerman, op. cit. (note 8), p. 16: ‘[...] les peintres avaient le droit d'écrire l'histoire avec leur pinceau aussi bien que les littérateurs avec leur plume [...].’

Critical debate

Gérôme consistently underestimated the political and religious implications of his stylistic and iconographic innovations in this period. ‘These paintings caused me a great deal of trouble,’ he was later to recall with regret in his discussion of the Salon of 1868.¹⁹ The Jérusalem was just as much an infringement of decorum as the Execution. Even critics who were generally well-disposed towards the painter, such as Théophile Gautier and Edmond About, had their reservations. About, who had been a member of the expedition to the Orient in 1868, held up the complete artist, Gérôme, as a model for realist painters like Courbet,

19 Ibid.: ‘Ces deux toiles m'ont causé toutes sortes d'ennui.’

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who thought they could get away without study. About saw Gérôme as an ingenious painter filled with ‘insatiable curiosity,’ who nonetheless knew how to direct his talent through careful study.²⁰ He realised that many people had expressed a certain amount of amazement about Jérusalem, but in his view the strongly criticised lighting was in keeping with the biblical text, and the setting and figures revealed the hand of a master. He did not, however, defend the painter's icongraphic invention.

Gautier went into great detail about the original moment chosen: after Christ has already died. He called the shadows ‘a bizarre and original invention.’ He understood the implication that ‘the shadow of an execution is more terrifying than the deed itself,’ but added that this ‘idea is probably a little too ingeniously literary for a painting.’ Nevertheless Gautier felt that painters should be free to invent something new, particularly if the subject had been painted so frequently and the work was not destined for a specific religious purpose, ‘although,’ he added, ‘there is always the lurking danger that one will succumb to fancifulness.’ After an elaborate description of the landscape, he summarised the confusion the painting had caused him as follows: ‘The effect of this composition is strange and leads one's judgment astray: to which category should it really be allotted?’ In light of the fact that the landscape and the figures were given equal importance, he decided to assign it to the rubric ‘Tableau d'histoire pittoresque.’ On the other hand, the accuracy of the topography made it a specifically modern painting; the Jerusalem Gérôme painted he had seen in real life, and for this reason his picture was a great step forward when compared with a work like Mantegna's Crucifixion (Paris, Louvre).²¹

What undoubtedly was a sincere attempt to modernise religious art was met with incomprehension by the critics of an ultramontane disposition. The painter-critic

fig. 7
‘Gill,’ caricature from Le Salon pour Rire (Paris 1968), p. 3

Claudius Lavergne addressed his particularly scathing remarks to the artist in the conservative-Catholic L' Univers. He accused Gérôme of painting riddles, ‘toiles logogriphiques,’ and claimed that he could not manage to decipher the work without an explanatory text. The canvas was nothing more than ‘provocative mystification’: Jerusalem ‘in no way resembles the Holy City,’ and the Calvary in the foreground appeared at first glance to be empty; indeed, it was a ‘bizarre invention’ but not ‘original,’ as Gautier had maintained. He sarcastically compared Gérôme's invention with picture puzzles. The critic referred to the painter derisively as a ‘peintre ethnographique,’ who had unfortunately looked to the Orient to replenish his inspiration, which had run dry.²² Lavergne was a friend of the painter Hippolyte Flandrin, who had painted a neo-Giottesque cycle of the life of Christ in Saint Germain-des-Près around 1860. When the

20 Edmond About, ‘Le salon de 1868,’ La Revue des Deux Mondes 75 (1868), pp. 728-29.

21 Théophile Gautier, ‘Salon de 1868,’ Moniteur Universel (2 May 1868), pp. 1-2: ‘C'est là certes un invention originale et bizarre [...] L'ombre du supplice est plus effrayante que le supplice lui-même; mais peut-être est-ce là une idée un peu trop ingénieusement littéraire pour la peinture. [...] il est bien permis après tout de chercher le neuf, même au risque de rencontrer le baroque, surtout lorsque l'oeuvre n'a pas une destination spécialement religieuse [...] L'effet de cette composition est étrange et déroute le jugement. [...] Le meilleur titre à lui donner serait: Tableau d'histoire pittoresque.’

22 Claudius Lavergne [presumed to be a pseudonym for Louis Veuillot], ‘Beaux-Arts. Exposition de 1868,’ L'Univers (21 May 1868), pp. 1-2.

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frescos were criticised for their lack of historical precision, Lavergne defended the right of painters to create idealised depictions of biblical history, focusing on the symbolic meaning of the events.²³ His aversion to the naturalistic treatment of religious themes even led him to censure the Immaculate Conception by Murillo in the Louvre.²⁴

23 Idem, Du réalisme historique dans l'art et l'archéologie, Paris 1864.

24 Idem, ‘Iconographie de l'Immaculé Conception de la Très-Sainte-Vierge,’ L'Univers (6 September 1856).

Ernest Renan

Lavergne's biting critique of Gérôme's Jérusalem can not be dissociated from the Shockwave caused by the publication of Ernest Renan's Vie de Jésus in 1863. Following in the footsteps of German theologists, Renan was bent upon analyzing the Bible as an historical literary source. In order to do so he made use of modern historical-critical and philological methods. The fact that for Renan the Bible was no longer unconditionally the Word of God, and its only permissable interpretation given by the doctrinal authority of the Church, was seen in conservative-Catholic circles as a serious threat. It was Renan's positivist approach to the Gospel that led many painters away from depicting biblical history according to the standard sacred images handed down by the tradition, showing them instead as historical events that had occured at a certain time and place in the past. By placing biblical history in the ‘there’ and ‘then’ painters thus relativised its universal significance. Catholicism, whose very existence depends on the opportunity of repeating a hallowed form of the Crucifixion in the ‘here’ and ‘now’ - i.e. through the Sacrifice of the Mass - was threatened to the core by a representation of events such as that given by Gérôme.

Orientalism had led artists into temptation. On their journeys to the Orient painters came into contact with a culture they could interpret in no other way than by using their knowledge of the Bible. ‘The Bible is here a painting of modern manners and customs,’ wrote Gustave Flaubert in 1850 from Cairo.²⁵ At that time painters had already been practising ‘biblical Bedouinism,’ as it was sarcastically called, for more than ten years. The most famous of these biblical Orientalists was Horace Vernet: after travelling through Algeria, he exhibited Rebecca at the well (present location unknown), in which Rebecca is shown dressed in oriental attire, at the Salon of 1835. In 1846 he gave a speech at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in which he defended a painter's right to depict biblical history in oriental costume. Driskel has rightly pointed out that opting for biblical realism implied a direct attack on ultramontane aesthetics.²⁶ For the time being, however, the New Testament was spared this type of painterly reinterpretation. Alexandre Descamps, who after his trip to the Middle East in 1827 could boast of first-hand oriental experience, was the first artist to ‘update’ not only the Old Testament but the New Testament as well. In 1847 he painted Christ at the Praetorium (Paris, Musée d'Orsay), which shows the Saviour surrounded by modern oriental figures

There were soon protests from the painters' ranks as well, voices raised in condemnation of the often all-too realistic representation of biblical history. In his travel journal Un été dans le Sahara (1856) the painter-writer Eugène Fromentin enthusiastically proclaimed that the country and inhabitants of North Africa provided the very image of the biblical Israel. But he immediately added that ‘only half of it is true.’ It was the old problem of couleur locale and costume that was raised here, once again bringing into play an axiom in art theory that had already had a major role in 17th-century French classicism, namely that history painters should increase the credibility of their scenes by making correct and historically reliable choices in terms of people's costume and in their portrayal of landscape. Fromentin opposed those who sought to revive religious art by looking for inspiration in the Orient. The ideal of historical exactitude did not apply to biblical scenes: ‘Dressing up the Bible means destroying it; it is like dressing a demigod, and in so doing making him a human being. Placing him in a recognisable topography means transgressing against his spirit; it is to

25 Letter from Gustave Flaubert to Jules Cloquet, Cairo, 15 January 1850; see Gustave Flaubert, Correspondance (1830-1850), Paris 1905, p. 258: ‘Le bible est ici une peinture de moeurs contemporaines.’

26 Michaël Paul Driskel, Representing belief: religion, art and society in nineteenth-century France, University Park 1992, p. 195.

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translate history into an a-historical book. However, the idea does need to be clothed. The masters achieved this by stripping the form of its accidental features and by simplifying it, that means repressing all local colour - that would be sticking as closely as possible to the truth.’²⁷ Raphael and Poussin had understood this perfectly.

Renan himself, who had paved the way for the arrival of an historical Jesus, was also opposed to the historicisation of religious art. His Nouvelles études d'histoire religieuse includes a fascinating dissertation on religious painting. He dealt at great length with the phenomenon, much remarked upon, that it is often not the works of great masters like Raphael or Michelangelo that evoke our religious feelings. Instead they ‘inspire a sort of liberal pride, which is not exactly the same as religious piety.’²⁸ It is rather ‘harmless platitudes’ that move the humble, simple masses. Artists like Paul Delaroche, who ‘wanted to paint the Gospel as he paints history,’²⁹ had missed the point. Renan claimed that Delaroche, who was Gérôme's teacher, had a tendency to opt for the anecdotal in place of the iconography made sacred by tradition. This was ‘a profanation’ and in Renan's view a sign of the advancement of materialism into religion. Renan believed that religious art should be neither suggestive of historical reality nor anecdotal, but that it should contain certain ‘unparalleled symbols, made sacred by humanity, accepted by everyone, and to which nothing may be added.’³⁰ It is interesting to note that Renan made a clear distinction between art that should rouse the simple minded to devotion and his own historical analysis and interpretation of the life of Jesus.³¹

In 1870, when a new edition of his Vie de Jésus appeared with illustrations by Godefroy Durand, however, it excelled in following Renan's text to the letter. Durand's illustrations of the Crucifixion are probably the most realistic renderings of the evangelical text ever made. On the basis of his study of Roman torture methods, Renan had become convinced that the cross must have been T-shaped

fig. 8
Godefroy Durand, Sa tête s'inclina sur sa poitrine, et il expira, from Ernest Renan, Vie de Jésus, 1870

with short cross-beams. Durand based his depiction on this conclusion, thus breaking entirely with tradition (fig. 8).³² Gérôme did not dare to go this far in Jérusalem, for no matter how unusual his point of view and choice of time might be, the shadows of the crosses themselves still have their customary form; without this, the scene would have been in danger of being unrecognisable.

27 Eugène Fromentin, ‘Un été dans le Sahara,’ in Oeuvres complètes, Paris 1984, pp. 47-48: ‘Costumer la Bible c'est la d'étruire; comme habiller un demi-dieu, c'est en faire un homme. La placer en un lieu reconaissable, c'est la faire mentir à son esprit; c'est traduire en histoire un livre antéhistorique. Comme à toute force, il faut vêtir l'idée les maîtres ont compris que dépouiller la forme et la simplifier, c'est-à dire supprimer toute couleur locale, c'était se tenir aussi près que possible de la vérité [...].’

28 Ernest Renan, Nouvelles études d'histoire religieuse, Paris 1884, p. 408: ‘Raphael, Michel-Ange ou Titien [...] inspirent une sorte de fierté libérale qui n'est pas précisément la piété chrétienne.’

29 Ibid., p. 409: ‘il voulut peindre l'Evangile comme il avait peint l'histoire.’

30 Ibid., p. 410: ‘pour le grand art [...] il n'existe qu'un symbole incomparable, consacré par l'humanité, adopté de tous, et auquel il n'est permis de rien ajouter.’

31 The parallel between the ideas of the liberal Ernest Renan and the leader of the Dutch liberal party Frits Bolkestein is inescapable. Although Bolkestein does not call himself a Christian, he does consider Christianity to be useful as a binding element in western culture.

32 The T-form cross was the focus of an intense debate between ultramontane Catholics and the Jansenists, who are said to have argued for a T-shaped cross from the 17th century onwards; see Driskel, op. cit. (note 26), pp. 87ff.

Marketing ‘Jérusalem’

It was the criticism from religious circles that hurt the pious Gérôme most, and in his autobiography, written eight years later, he still felt the need to justify himself at great length. In support of his unusual manner of representation he stressed the artist's right to invent ‘a new form of narration.’³³ He even found that his expressive in-

33 Ackerman, op. cit. (note 8), p. 18. Here, once again, Gérôme shows himself to be a worthy heir of classical theory: Poussin, for example, expressed the same view in the remarks published by Giovanni Bellori as an appendix to his Vita of the painter (Le Vite de'pittori scultori et achitetti moderni, Rome 1672, pp. 460-62).

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vention possessed ‘a certain poetry,’ and thus echoed the time-honoured link between the arts of painting and verse. After all, had not Horace in his Ars Poetica allowed for a certain amount of licentia, proclaiming the freedom of both the poet and other artists to depart from well-trodden paths in their creations? Furthermore, Gérôme wrote, he had not relied on literary anecdote, but had only chosen an unusual time of day for his depiction; even the shadows were merely an expressive artistic device; seen as a whole, he had remained entirely ‘within the domain of art.’³⁴

The only person who praised Gérôme for this invention in so many words was the one person who otherwise never failed to taunt him on political-artistic grounds: Théophile Thoré. From his romantic point of view, with Delacroix serving as his great hero, the finished look and excessive smoothness of Gérôme's style was, generally speaking, unbearable; but he praised the painter of Jérusalem for his ‘subtle invention,’ which he saw as a ‘caprice très-artiste.’ Goya and Daumier, two of Thoré's favourite masters, were cited as artists who could have invented something similar in their graphic work. Thoré thought this type of creativeness did not harmonise with Gérôme's style, however; it had deserved a freer, more imaginative hand instead.³⁵

Neither of the 1868 Salon paintings had the success their maker, and his sponsor Goupil, had expected. In 1871, three years after being exhibited, they disappeared abroad. The Execution of Marshall Ney went to England, which apparently felt more favourable towards this ‘judicial murder’ than the country where it had actually taken place. In the same year Goupil sold the second work, by now under the more explanatory title of Golgotha. Consummatum est!, to his colleague Knoedler in New York for the substantial sum of 30,000 francs.³⁶ Knoedler must have sold it before 1873 to Henry N. Smith, as it was he who lent it to the Brooklyn Art Association's spring exhibition that year, under yet another title: After the Crucifixion.³⁷ Having changed hands a number of times in America, the painting was eventually auctioned at Christie's, New York, in 1990, where it was acquired by the Musée d'Orsay - which has shown it as part of its permanent collection ever since. In his monograph on Gérôme, published in 1986, Ackerman had assumed that the painting was lost; he was only familiar with a photographic reproduction and the large-size engraving (55 × 96 cm) made by Herman Eichens and published by Goupil in 1871. Both the painter and the dealer, just like the critic Thoré, must have recognised the composition's graphic potential, because a small-scale replica was executed to serve as a model for the print. This replica was also sold abroad, this time to the Netherlands.³⁸ In 1872 it was sold by Goupil's Hague branch to Th. Soeterik.³⁹ In 1939 it surfaced again, appearing in the auction catalogue of the Rooyards van den Ham collection. According to an annotated edition of the catalogue, the painting went for f 2750 and was bought by W.A. Rooyards.⁴⁰ In all likelihood the painting stayed in the same collection until it was bought by the Van Gogh Museum in 1995.

The vicissitudes of the various versions of the painting are symptomatic of its problematic nature. It is a religious picture made not for a religious context or even for religious worship, but destined for an exhibition, where it was designed to stand out among thousands of other paintings.⁴¹ The painter, like most of the public to whom his work was addressed, was imbued with positivist ideas about historical and topographical accuracy. He was even prepared to go on a hazardous expedition to make his painting as true-to-life as possible. But instead of praise the work earned him a barrage of criticism, most of which was entirely insensitive to his efforts at exactitude. Many critics were concerned with a higher truth, and wanted to see the Crucifixion as a sign of the Redemption. Others

34 Ackerman, op. cit. (note 8), p. 18.

35 [Th. Thoré], Salons de W. Bürger, 1861-1868, 2 vols., Paris 1870, vol. 2 p. 467: ‘Tel est l'invention subtile de M. Gérôme, caprice très-artiste, assurément, et qui aurait pu insprirer Goya pour une vive eau-forte ou Daumier pour une lithographie. [...] Il me semble qu'à cette espèce de lazzi [witticism] une exécution libre et même un peu fantastique eût été mieux approprié.’

36 Gerald Ackerman, The life and work of Jean-Léon Gérôme, Paris 1986, p. 220, nos. 169 and 170.

37 Clark S. Marlor, A history of the Brooklyn Art Association with an index of exhibitions, New York [1970], pp. 199, 398.

38 In an undated memo (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, Van Gogh Museum archives) Ackerman clarified the origins of both versions. The print by Herman Eichens was offered for sale in Goupil's reproduction catalogue for 240 francs, as an épreuve d'art; it was one of the firm's most expensive prints (see Catalogue général de Goupil & Cie., Paris [n.d.], p. 16). The popularity of the composition in the Netherlands is confirmed by a the existence of a simple reproduction print, probably made after the Goupil print, published by Joh. De Liefde, Utrecht (39 × 55.5 cm, copy D.R.V.K. AA 428). With thanks to Jan de Hond.

39 The hague branch of Goupil's purchased the work on 28 February 1872 and sold it a week later, on 7 March. With thanks to Ronald de Leeuw.

40 Tableaux Modernes collection Royaards van den Ham de feu Madame douarière W.J. Royaards van den Ham à Utrecht, Frederik Muller (Amsterdam), 8 November 1910, lot 27; see The Hague, Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), F. Muller & Co. archives.

41 Maria Poprzecka has given thorough consideration to the ‘exhibition value’ of religious works of art in the 19th century; see idem, ‘Le sacré au Salon,’ in Francis Haskell (ed.), Saloni, gallerie, musei e loro influenza sullo sviluppo dell'arte dei secoli XIX e XX, Bologna 1979, pp. 49-53.

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mainly condemned his shadows for being inartistic: spectacular, modern and photographically tainted pictorial inventions. For Gérôme, however, they were meant not only to make the picture less banal, to demonstrate the import of its subject in terms of world history, but also to help the viewer witness and participate in what had happened in the same way a photograph would. To achieve this effect, which the painter himself called poetic, he even acted contrary to his principles as far as the topographical accuracy of his presentation was concerned.

But Gérôme also failed in the eyes of the avantgarde, realist critics. Thoré specified quite precisely that it was the friction between the painter's poetic invention and the ethically and politically compromising smoothness, precision and slickness of its execution that formed the inner contradiction of the painting. It was only in a context where these ideological and stylistic controversies played no role that the two versions of the painting could be accepted, namely among private collectors outside France, in this instance in America and the Netherlands. It was only on all-forgiving museum walls, with their historically balanced overview, that they could find their last resting place.

In his own time Gérôme's artistic inventions were hardly imitated at all. It is possible that William Holman Hunt was inspired by the shadows of the crosses in Jérusalem when, in a piece of ‘disguised symbolism,’ he showed Jesus as a young man casting an ominous shadow on the wall of his father's carpentry workshop. Mary appears to recognise this reference to her son's future suffering (fig. 9).⁴² Eventually it was the surrealists who best exploited Gérôme's unintentional discrepancy between academic craftsmanship and artistic invention. Dali frequently mentioned Gérôme as one of his favourite artists, whilst Giorgio de Chirico developed the foreboding shadow of the unseen into his metaphysical trademark.

fig. 9
William Holman Hunt, The shadow of Death, 1870-73, Manchester, City Art Gallery

42 See Ernst Gombrich, Shadows: the depiction of shadows in western art, London 1995, pp. 55-56.