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Van Gogh Museum Journal 2001 (2001)

Van Gogh Museum Journal 2001

(2001)– [tijdschrift] Van Gogh Museum Journal–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

[The collection in context]



illustratie
fig. 1
Eugène Delacroix, Agony in the garden, c. 1851, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum


The agony in the garden by Eugène Delacroix
Joyce Polistena+

The 19th-century novelist and art critic Théophile Gautier believed that Jesus was always a tragic character and that such a personage ‘could be captured only by great artists like Rembrandt, Goya and Delacroix.’1 In Eugène Delacroix's painting Agony in the garden, currently in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Jesus is portrayed as a pathetic character, seemingly aware of the ignominious death that awaits him (fig. 1). This powerful treatment of a scene from the Passion narratives exemplifies a popular typos of romantic religious painting which emphasised the human suffering of the God-man. As such, Delacroix's interpretation is typical of a new thematic content and iconography that flourished at mid-century.

The following essay proposes several points that contradict critical assumptions about 19th-century religious art in general, and about Delacroix's religious paintings in particular. First, the study suggests that a consideration of the theologies that influenced romantic painters and an analysis of their thematic and historical content are mutually necessary elements for an adequate interpretation of these artists' works. A review of the (art) history shows that the cultural climate of the mid-19th century was one that embraced religion, and that theological tenets interfaced with political and social concerns. Thus, the religious paintings of this period cannot be fully understood apart from the historical, political and even religious context. For example, throughout the 1830s and 1840s, when humanitarian and progressive Catholic philosophies were most influential, paintings representing these philosophies flourished. What is perhaps more surprising is that artists as diverse as Eugène Delacroix, Ary Scheffer, Théodore Chassériau, Paul Delaroche and Hippolyte Flandrin entered into a thematic consensus based upon a modern iconographic language rooted in these liberal theologies. Conservative stylists on the other hand - for example A.-J.-V. Orsel, E. Amaury-Duval, Adolphe Roger et al. - continued to draw inspiration from more traditional Tridentine dogmas of Christian faith.2

Second, I will show that Delacroix's biblical themes indicate that he approached his subjects under the dual influence of liberal Catholicism and the dynamic concept of the Church first developed by theologians at Tübingen, Germany.

Third, without denying Delacroix's critical attitude toward liberalism and his scepticism towards Catholic doctrine - readily apparent in his Journal - I suggest that the artist's sympathetic and sustained interest in Christianity was totally consistent with the sentiments religieuses of his time. Finally, I will demonstrate that this newly enriched thematic content satisfied the desire for a modern religious art, while the motif of the vulnerable, solitary hero in the Agony in the garden met the aesthetic needs of an elite class.

Religious revival and iconography

The revival of interest in religious topics in art was primarily a response to the resurgence of devotional practices and a renewed commitment to the Church among the

European intellectual and social elite at the close of the Napoleonic regime. Beginning under the Restoration (1815-30) and continuing during the July Monarchy (1830-48), Salon records reveal that biblical themes outpaced those of antique goddesses and allegorical subjects. In his Salon review of 1837, critic Auguste Barbier noted that the number of sacred scenes had even exceeded those of battle pictures.3 Frederic de Mercey, whose 1838 review appeared in the Revue des Deux-Mondes, commented that ‘there is hardly an artist this year who has not made a religious picture.’4 During the 1840s pictures of the Passion and death of Christ predominated in the annual Salons. Between 1831 and 1848 Salon artists exhibited 39 paintings of Christ in the garden of olives, 30 pictures of Christ on the cross, 33 heads of Christ, 29 images of Christ in the tomb, 24 paintings of The descent from the cross, and 15 of Christ dying on the cross. This represented a 73-percent increase over earlier decades.5

Another possible reason for the large number of renderings of scenes from the Passion was the widespread devotion to the Way of the Cross, which the faithful were encouraged to meditate upon during the mass. The subject was particularly popular in France during times of social and political upheaval, as it underscored the basic Christian belief in redemptive suffering. Historian F.P. Bowman has observed that ‘the image of Christ's despair in the Garden of Gethsemane now became the model for the “crucifixion” of the just [...]. Jesus was seen less and less as the realisation of the prophets and more and more as a revolutionary in the human condition.’6 In this period, the popular cult of the Sacred Heart encouraged believers to contemplate the sacrificial nature of Jesus' love and in the iconography we find the heart encircled by a crown of thorns. Subsequently, veneration of the suffering Jesus was linked to contemporary political strife, and we often find devotional literature and devotional art, as well as rituals, illustrating this idea. Images of Jesus's Passion (and of the Virgin Mary) were associated with the political revolutions of 1830 and 1848, where religious phenomena and supernatural appearances were coupled with the social unrest and disruptive events.7

A third impetus for the renewed interest in gospel themes among artists was the increasing support for Utopian and humanist doctrines. Demanding greater economic justice and workers' rights, many secular reformers found a basis for social ethics in religion and in the Jesus of romanticism. Images of Le Christ des barricades and Le Christ libérateur were widespread, and christology (that part of dogmatic theology that studies the redemptive nature of Christ's person and work) seeped into contemporary art and literature.8 Writer and editor of the liberal Catholic journal L'Européen Philippe-Joseph-Benjamin Buchez was one voice among many insisting on the value of Christian themes in art in promoting concern for the underclass and effecting social regeneration, advocating the importance of religion for an organic social system. Art historian and avid communist Léon Rosenthal was the first to point to the connection between religious art and the social reform movement in this volatile period. Rosenthal noted that although liberal Catholicism and the tenets of social humanitarianism were at first scoffed at, they gradually gained acceptance after 1840.9

In seeking to explain the turn towards New Testament subjects in art, we find that the dramatic resurgence also resulted from a re-engagement with religious thought, a recommitment to Christian beliefs, and from the fervent interest in German idealist philosophies that had developed in the first decades of the century. In France, liberal theologians and ecclesiastics posited a radical christocentric humanitarianism that was buttressed by secular demands for social reform.

After 1850, however, we find an abrupt decline in paintings representing the principles of liberal Catholicism and a subsequent retrenchment in traditional iconography. The triumph of conservative thinking after years of ecclesiastical conflict led to a re-emergence of both the content and the formal and expressive means of traditional Tridentine iconography, crushing all further attempts at pictorial expression derived from radical contemporary sources.

The importance of Möhler

What made it possible for Delacroix and other painters to render the figure of Jesus Christ in doubt and suffering - without, however, compromising his divine nature - was the inspiration they drew from a theological model that placed greater emphasis on the dynamic relatedness of the infinite (God) and the finite (man). This model elevated the status of man in relation to God, effectively making new themes available for religious art. We can trace the origin of these radical theologies to Germany and such early 19th-century Protestant philosophers as Freidrich Schleiermacher and Freidrich Schelling, whose teachings admitted more subjectivity in the experience of the divine (as an awareness of absolute dependence on God). Stimulated by their ideas, influential Catholic thinkers began calling for reforms and expanding theology away from the more rigid medieval scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas,10 re-conceptualising the theology of the person of Christ from an anthropological perspective. Foremost among them was Johann Adam Möhler, whose ideas were instrumental in determining the revision of Catholic theology. Möhler moved beyond purely romantic theology, with its emphasis on the immediacy of individual feeling, towards a more open and dynamic idea of the Church as a communal embodiment of the Spirit. Möhler's ‘incarnational theology’ defined the Church as the indwelling of the Holy Spirit among a community of believers and provided ecclesiastical models from which new typologies could be drawn. He was particularly concerned with the organic unfolding of divine and human relatedness as a shared experience of both the infinite and the finite.11

Möhler's definition of ecclesiology joined with the principles of social Catholicism and helped shift artistic focus towards the depiction of earthly events and the human dimension of Jesus' redemptive action rather than his glorious, heavenly existence. The emphasis for artists became the created being and not the Creator; they concerned themselves with earthly events rather than the heavenly realm, and concentrated on daily life and prescriptions for a living sainthood.

Delacroix's Agony in the garden of 1851, as well as his many versions of St Sebastian helped by the holy women and The good Samaritan (fig. 2), and his renderings of The disciples and the holy women piously retrieving the body of St Stephen (figs. 3 and 4)12 cannot be fully understood without some knowledge of Möhler's contemporary theology. With regard to the St Stephen in particular we may say the subject is conceived in Möhlerist terms, as Delacroix takes up the scenario of the first Christian martyr from the point of view of the disciples, thus underscoring the notion of the communal share in incarnate suffering. By the same token, his interpretation of Jesus crawling un-heroically on the ground does not violate belief in his sacred person. Theologian G.A. McCool has explained this paradox: ‘Neither the perfection of Christ's human nature nor his possession of the Beatific Vision excludes the possibility of ignorance and of progressive growth in his human knowledge. As such, it required human experience of the world, and it was in no way incompatible with doubt or with suffering.’13

Delacroix consistently adopted the dynamic style of baroque naturalism for scenes that stressed human charity as a locus for divine grace - not only in those subjects previously mentioned but also in The entombment, The lamentation and The supper at Emmaus, as well as such genre scenes as The education of the Virgin.14 Many of these resemble Counter-Reformation works based on 17th-century theology, which emphasised God's presence in the humble activities of human life. There are thus similarities between the painting styles of the romantic and baroque periods that correspond to the similarities between romantic and baroque theology, both of which underscore the discovery of the theological in the anthropological.

If we ask how Delacroix, a religious sceptic and critic of liberal humanitarianism, first learned of these modern Catholic philosophies, we discover that the path was a surprisingly direct one. In France, Möhler's ideas were disseminated in the seminaries by Abbé Bautain, and in more popular forums by Père Félicité Lamennais. As one of the most influential preachers of liberal Catholicism in this era, Lamennais's radical proposals for the remedying of injustice galvanised his followers, and his many publications inspired a kind of ‘Jesus-liberator’ iconography. In all likelihood, Delacroix became familiar with Lamennais's thought through his close friend George Sand, who was associated with the priest and also deeply influence by the principles of Catholic humanitarianism.15 Delacroix was in accord with certain aspects of Lamennais preaching, believing that Christianity possessed a superior moral code and was thus a safeguard to civilisation, but he disagreed with the radical notion of equality among the social classes.

During the later years of the July Monarchy the revived interest in the historical development of Christ's human consciousness spread beyond the seminary and universities, giving rise to new interpretations in religious art. Paintings such as Delacroix's Christ at the column,16 Scheffer's Christ intercessor (Utrecht, Centraal Museum) and Christ consoler (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum), Chassériau's Christ in the garden of olives (fig. 5) and Christ descending the garden of olives (Souillac, St Mary's), Paul Delaroche's Christ on the mount of olives (fig. 6), and Flandrin's Descent from the cross and Piètà (Lyon, Musée de Beaux-Arts) illustrate this popular mid-century typology. In

illustratie
fig. 2
Eugène Delacroix, The good Samaritan, 1849-50, New York, private collection


the same humanitarian spirit, Lamennais's protestations against the bourgeoisie demanded a living-out of the values promulgated in the gospels and called for justice for the underclass. Principles of liberal Catholicism influenced popular iconography, which included depictions of Christ as the universal brother, as the ‘good shepherd to the outcasts,’ as the ‘sower of the Word,’ as a labourer, and as the liberator of the poor and oppressed - motifs that served the working class audience and subjects that were meant to stimulate the piety of the masses.

Not surprisingly, the bourgeoisie preferred other themes, more specifically scenes from Christ's Passion. Filled with feelings of existential anxiety stirred by economic uncertainty and social unrest, bourgeois taste tended toward images of the suffering redeemer almost as an emblem of a class and an epoch. When we consider that the literacy rate in France was merely five to ten percent of the adult population, the abundant literary references to this model of Jesus mirror the self-identity of this elite class. For example, Charles Blanc, founder and editor of the influential Gazette des Beaux-Arts, believed that the suffering,



illustratie
fig. 3
Eugène Delacroix, The disciples and the holy women piously retrieving the body of St Stephen, 1853, Arras, Musée des Beaux-Arts


tragic figure of Christ was a pervasive one, but Salon records and church commissions reveal a much more varied iconography. Thus, the powerful bourgeoisie projected a rather narrow Christian theology that focused on individual human existence, even solitary suffering, rather than on tenets of resurrection and salvation. Salon reviews in general, and those written by Gautier in particular, addressed this elite segment of society: in 1844 the critic wrote that in Chassériau's Christ descending the garden of olives ‘a modern sadness pounds under the traditional tunic of Christ; they are the tears of our times that flow from these eyes [...]; our melancholy pours

illustratie
fig. 4
Eugène Delacroix, St Stephen borne away by the disciples, 1862,
Birmingham, The University of Birmingham, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts (photograph courtesy of the Bridgeman Art Library)


from this head in tears; this figure is intelligent and tired [...], it is the suffering anxiety of our age [...].’ In the same review, he reminded readers of Chassériau's pendant piece, Christ in the garden of olives (fig. 5): ‘[...] Christ receives from the hands of the archangel the chalice filled to the brim with the bitter wine of sorrows. [...] it is the mark of a desolation and sadness even more profound.’17 Nettement's discussion of Delaroche's Christ on the mount of olives (fig. 6) seized on its symbolic meaning for the present generation: ‘The spectacle of sad humanity, then something more, the feeling of true sadness, has brought Delaroche to the only true religion, to the religion of pain,


illustratie
fig. 5
Théodore Chassériau, Christ in the garden of olives, 1840, Paris, Church of St Jean-d'Angély (phototype Inventaire Général/Marc Deneyer, 1998 © A.D.A.G.P.)


to Christianity.’18 Bowman has observed a similar preference for this model of Jesus in the writing of George Sand: ‘Sand evoked very little of the gospel material and the life of Jesus, preferring only those scenes of the cenacle, the garden of olives, and the Passion.’19

Sources

The raw power of Eugène Delacroix's Agony in the garden (fig. 1) gives the image of Christ's human nature a great pathos and renders it evocative of a deep melancholy, which, in view of our shared humanity, is meant to raise in us feelings of anxiety. Rather than seeking to arouse our pity Delacroix instead calls on the spectator's empathy. In a Journal entry of 28 February 1847 the artist wrote enthusiastically about wanting to read a recently published and popular intimate account of the sufferings of Christ during the Passion as revealed to Sister Catherine Emmerich: ‘The exceedingly interesting book [...] is by a German ecstatic, I must read it.’20 Although we have no record of Delacroix's reaction to the book, the Agony in the garden is clearly faithful to the biblical text, as the Synoptic Gospel writers never recoiled from depicting Jesus' utter agony, his feeling of having been forsaken by God the Father as he faces a horrible death. The painting in the Van Gogh Museum appears nearest to the Markan account of the gospel story, in which Jesus tells the disciples: ‘My soul is sorrowful even unto death’ (Mark 14:34).21 Delacroix's painting shows Christ isolated and vulnerable; the God-man throws himself upon the ground and prays that this hour might pass him by: ‘Abba, Father! [...] take this cup away from me. But let it be as you, not I would have it.’(Mark 14:37).22 The concept of a Jesus nearly crushed under the weight of the temptation to forgo obedience and death is a radical 19th-century modality, in the sense that non-traditional theology and not biography determines the image.

Eugène Delacroix's portrayal of Jesus' prescient vision of the impending desertion by his disciples, of Peter's denial, of his arrest and trial, torture, mocking and death is exemplary of the kind of romantic excess that alarmed certain conservative critics.23 His energetic forms, vibrant colours and baroque tenebrism intensify the emotional power of the religious mystery already inherent in the ‘Agony in the garden’ theme, a scenario that depends on a compelling narrative, with plot, action, reaction and a cast of supporting characters who add to the drama of Jesus' profound struggle for faith in his abysmal state of uncertainty - ‘My God, my God why have you forsaken me?’ The profundity of this conflict will be revealed only at his death, with the words: ‘It is consummated.’ Biblical scholar and exegeticist R. Brown reasons that unless we take these words seriously we cannot see the logic of Jesus' anguished prayer that the cup be taken from him.24

Although Delacroix did several versions of this subject in a variety of media (oil, pastel, pen and ink wash, pencil and crayon) dating from the 1840s through the 1850s, the pic-

ture in the Van Gogh Museum most closely resembles a known, but now lost work of the same title of circa 1849: both show the cloaked but muscular torso of Jesus, a man with broad shoulders lying prostrate and nearly writhing with pain.25 The figure is drawn on a diagonal in the middle ground, while his right arm lengthens the diagonal and his right leg appears from beneath a swathe of deep cerulean blue cloth, which enfolds his body and extends backward into the composition. Although the form is rather flaccid and bulky, a psychic energy shoots through it, as if Christ's whole body is wrestling with the temptation to flee. The drama of the moment is accentuated by expressive details such as the downward turn of the mouth, the strained tilt of the head, the open palm and clenched fingers. Delacroix's story takes place without ministering angels, and an austere and vulnerable Jesus ‘sweats blood’ at the thought of his impending ordeal - a sharp contrast to the self-possessed God-man in the Johannine account.26 (R. Brown clarifies that agōnia - from which we derive the scene's title - is a Greek word describing the supreme tension of the sweat-drenched athlete at the start of a contest.27) In Delacroix's painting, Jesus' head twists upward, his neck muscles wrenched and straining; despite the fact that the head appears disproportionately small, the jaw line is clearly defined, indicating a kind of heroic determination: ultimately, the Passion strengthens rather than weakens his resolve. Delacroix's image evokes the passage from Isaiah with the description of the suffering servant who ‘sets his face like flint’ (Isaiah. 50:7).

Eugène Delacroix and Ary Scheffer

If I am right that Delacroix's various paintings of St Sebastian helped by the holy women and The good Samaritan exhibit a Mennaisian influence and that Möhlerist ideas determine works such as The disciples and the holy women piously

illustratie
fig. 6
Paul Delaroche, Christ on the mount of olives, 1855, present location unknown (photograph by permission of the British Library)


retrieving the body of St Stephen and The entombment, then he had a well-known predecessor: Dutch painter Ary Scheffer. More than any other artist of the 1830s, Scheffer devised themes from biblical narratives and religious tenets that stressed Christ's compassion, and this helped make his paintings popular with an audience eager for a modern religious art.28 His Christ the consoler is based on the Gospel of Luke (4:18), but it forgoes narrative and instead interprets Jesus' proclamation ‘I have come to set the captives free.’ Scheffer's image includes the figures of an African and a Pole

and shows the poor as mistreated and economically enslaved. In the reviews Scheffer's rendition of the gospel verse sparked contemporary analogies: ‘It was Christ who breaks the chains of the Poles [...]; it is a bloody reproach against those who have taken the part of the Tsar against the Polish people.’29 Other critiques concerned the unsuitability of Scheffer's Mennaisian theme and non-Tridentine subject. Scheffer's religious scenes were viewed as ‘too philosophical’ or ‘too German.’ Christ the consoler was thought to be ‘overly intellectual [...] less like a painting and more like a book.’30

In 1859 Louis Viardot noted that Scheffer was caught up in the spirit of the times - ‘a period more concerned with morality than faith.’ Such comments were attempts to diffuse the growing influence of German theologians and the perceived dangers of liberal Catholic philosophy; Viardot claimed that ‘these metaphysical paintings cast aside art's true role [...]; his [Scheffer's] subjects practically require a written explanation.’31 Ludovic Vitet also alluded to the influence of German thinkers on Scheffer's themes and iconography: ‘There is more philosophy in this painter than religion.’32

In pairing Delacroix's scenes of the Passion with Scheffer's images of New Testament precepts, I want to demarcate a group of painters - Pierre Proud'hon, to Hippolyte Flandrin, Hippolyte Lazerges, Emile Signol et al. - all of whom drew on themes and symbols derived from Lamennais's philosophy.33 They rejected the traditional iconography of an awe-inspiring Second Person of the Trinity, emphasising instead the historical person of Jesus, who was heroic in his isolation and vulnerability, a man-God whose earthly mission ended on the cross. Their interests reflect contemporary theologies that sought a deeper historical understanding of Christ's human consciousness. In repositioning these artists I am not attempting to use the ‘exceptions to prove the rule,’ to point up consistencies between incongruent styles, or to depoliticise religious commissions by revealing that similar (negative) criticism was dispersed across disparate works. Rather, I seek to clarify these artists' intentions to visualise the compassionate and fraternal aspects of Christianity with a heightened appreciation of the incarnate and mystical in theology. Both artists expand imaginatively beyond traditional models under the stimuli of liberal Catholicism and the dynamic concept of the Church articulated by the theologians at Tubingen.

Religious aspirations

The approximately 120 religious paintings and over 220 drawings and pastels by Delacroix have led me to readdress the widely-held view that these works were merely commissions and, as such, remote from the artist's personal taste or experience. In fact, Delacroix considered biblical subjects a fecund source of inspiration for an artist, an important impetus in calling forth ‘the aspirations of the soul.’34 In a revealing entry in his Journal, the painter declared: ‘I thought of all religion has to offer to the imagination, and at the same time of its appeal to man's deepest feelings. “Blessed are the meek, blessed are the peacemakers”: what other religion has ever made gentleness, resignation and simple goodness the sole aim of man's existence. “Beati pauperes spiritu”: Christ promised heaven to the poor in spirit, that is, to the simple-hearted; this is not so much intended to humble our pride in the human mind as to show us that a simple heart is better than a brilliant intellect.’35 Delacroix's eloquent expression of pious feeling, his interest in biblical subjects and his sympathy toward Catholicism were not atyp-

ical, as many romantics valued religion for both personal and social reasons.36

As an esteemed artist who gained major church commissions, Delacroix had to endure criticism for the supposed lack of religious feeling in these works; at the same time, however, supporters lauded his ‘enormous talent for sacred scenes.’37 L. Clément de Ris reported that each time Delacroix touched upon the themes of Christ's Passion, he captured a singular combination of ‘mysterious terror and divine majesty [...] the viewer is thrilled to things divine.’38 Critic and scholar Ernest Chesneau commented on this aptitude, particularly in those biblical or religious pictures created for the artist's own pleasure: ‘When one considers the devotional themes that Delacroix has treated in the course of his life of painting, one arrives at an enormous total; and when one reflects that these were most often subjects he had chosen of his own inclination, without having to be amenable to the exigencies of commissions, one must conclude that, without being either a mystic or a devout believer, Delacroix had not only poetry but a religious soul.’39

Without denying Delacroix's scepticism, my claim that the artist possessed a religious consciousness is scarcely without foundation in fact.40 Near the end of his life, in a rather profound entry in his Journal, we find the following: ‘God is within us. He is the inner presence that causes us to admire the beautiful, that must glad when we do right, and consoles us for having no share in the happiness of the wicked. It is he, no doubt, who breathes inspiration into men of genius, and warms their hearts at the sight of their own productions. Some men are virtuous, others are geniuses and both are inspired and favoured by God.’41 Moreover, we find that sacred subjects became increasingly important to Delacroix: eight paintings date from the 1830s; 18 from the 1840s; and 32 from the 1850s. The artist showed religious pictures in nearly every Salon from 1845 through 1859.42 His heightened interest in the thematic content of these scenes is apparent in his critical evaluation of other artists. For example, a Journal entry of 6 June 1854 shows us his decidedly religious impatience with Poussin's renderings of the figures of Christ and the Virgin Mary: ‘Poussin was never able to paint the head of Christ, or the body either - that body which should express so much tenderness, and the head that must be eloquent with divine grace and pity for the sufferings of mankind [...]. [As for] the Virgin, he seems to have no conception of the holiness and mystery surrounding her personality.’43 On the other hand, Delacroix believed that he himself was quite capable of almost effortlessly giving a spiritual component to his own devotional pictures: ‘Walked home, and went into St Roch to hear the midnight mass, I do not know whether it was because of the crowd or the lights or the solemnity of it all, but the pictures seemed to be colder and more insipid than ever, How rare talent is! [...] and yet what finer opportunity could any man have than religious subjects such as these! I only wanted one touch, just one single spark of feeling and deep emotion from all these pictures [...] a touch which I feel I could have given almost unconsciously.’44

Delacroix's sacred works are rendered with a spiritual feeling that strongly suggests his dramatic storytelling and brilliant brushwork are inseparable from his sympathies toward religion itself. Moreover, his choice of Mennaisian and Möhlerist themes as subject matter demonstrates that his characteristic modernity extends well beyond a romantic style of painting.


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