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Peter-Paul Rubens’s The Lamentation of Christ

In 1517, when Martin Luther posted an extensive list of accusations directed at the Catholic Church known as his “Ninety-Five Theses”, he initiated a divide in the church between Protestants and Catholics. The “concept of a single, universal Church, based in the Vatican and grounded in the belief that St. Peter was the first pope, gave way to numerous Christian sects, which included Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican churches”. The new Protestant factions discussed and debated theological ideals and doctrinal differences among themselves and with other Protestant divisions.

One of the major issues the Protestant Reformers as a whole had with the Catholic Church was the extreme level of devotion given by the Catholic Church to the Virgin Mary, the saints, and the sacraments. The Protestants, who believed in the worshipper’s personal relationship with God rather than through the assistance of the saints or the Church, condemned images centered around the Virgin and the saints. As a result, Protestant churches placed a blanketed ban on images inside the church, claiming that they encouraged idolatry. The Protestants’ condemnation of religious imagery went even further by inciting an upsurge of iconoclasm that resulted in the mass destruction of countless religious images, especially large works of art and sculptures deemed as idols. Therefore, the majority of Protestant church interiors were barren and the production of religious art greatly declined. In lieu of this, works of art depicting naturalistic scenes of normal daily life, landscapes, still-life, and even scenes from biblical stories grew in popularity and reflected a moralizing undertone to assist in personal devotions. Likewise, the Catholic Church saw a rise in conflicts between religious orders and faced problems with the formation of new sects that endangered the stability of the Church. Consequently, the new goal of works of art commissioned by Catholic patrons was to restore the dominance and centrality of Catholicism. The Council of Trent proclaimed that art played an important role as media for propaganda and from 1530 to 1563 the Church issued “Decrees on Art” to restrain any religious imagery that was contradictory to strict Catholic doctrine. During this time, much of the traditional religious iconography was prohibited because it lacked adequate doctrinal backing, as well as any inclusion of classical pagan elements in religious works and nearly all nudity.

Resulting from the Protestants seeking independence from the Catholic Church and from the Catholics trying to maintain their religious authority, a new style of Baroque art developed. Both the Protestants and the Catholics sought to expand and expose their religion to the population. Humanists helped to translate and circulate educational texts so that the population could educate themselves; however, because most of the population was still illiterate, images were the most effective way to educate the people. According to James Jackson’s article, “The Reformation and Counter-Reformation”, Baroque art and the Baroque era formed during the Counter-Reformation as “an ideological opposition to Protestant severity”. Although the art commissioned by Protestants did have a moralizing undertone to stimulate personal devotion, the Counter-Reformation’s Baroque art main focus was to prompt highly emotional responses from its audience to promote conversion. Therefore, any image of Christ’s suffering or showing extreme agony was not only desirable, but proper for church interiors.

The new artistic era brought on by the Counter-Reformation brought about great success for artists such as Peter-Paul Rubens who could create extremely emotional images that satisfied the reformed values of the patron. The Flemish artist, born in the German town of Siegen in 1577, is famous for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, as well as his mastery or landscapes, portraits, and historical works. He began his studies in Antwerp, but in 1600 he travelled to Italy where he was captivated by the ancient Greek and Roman sculptures. In Venice, he studied the works of Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto and created numerous drawings and sketches that, although lacking in detail, are extremely forceful—a characteristic of Rubens that appears passionate and frenzied when turned into a completed oil painting. The colors and compositions of the Venetian artists whom he studied had an immediate effect on Rubens as well as the Hellenistic sculpture, Laocoön, and the naturalistic paintings of Caravaggio (1st century BC; Vatican; Figure 2). “The culmination of his style during the Italian period combined the monumentality of Roman High Renaissance with Venetian painterly aspects” emphasizing movement, color, and sensuality and evoking the emotional response desired by Counter-Reformation patrons. His ability to create drama and emotion was a key factor in Rubens receiving the commission for The Lamentation of Christ from Cardinal Ascanio Colonna, who also employed his brother, Phillip, as a librarian. In this work of art, which may have been a prelude to his later work, also entitled The Lamentation of Christ, Rubens uses techniques learned from both his Northern heritage and his Southern studies (1617-1618; Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum Voor Schone Kunsten; Figure 3). As typical of Northern works of art, the image is both realistic and naturalistic, as opposed to the idealized figures of the Italian masters. The subject of the work of art, which was likely decided by Cardinal Ascanio Colonna, is the lamenting of Christ after his death and before his burial. Images of the lamenting of Christ arose around the 11th century in the South and around the 14th century in the North, so it was a subject Rubens would have been familiar with. In accordance with accounts of the Canonical Gospels, Rubens included four key figures in his painting (other than Christ): Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, the Virgin Mary, and Mary Magdalene, as well as a few other mourning women. Traditional scenes of the lamentation were centered around the Virgin Mary supporting the upper body of Christ which then evolved into devotional pieces emphasizing the emotional distress of Mary after the death of her son. Thus, the emphasis gradually shifted from a primarily narrative function to an emotion-evoking function.

Likely a result of the Protestant artistic reforms in Rubens’s Northern home, he further differentiates Rubens’s composition from traditional representations of the lamentation by not making the Virgin Mary (or any of the other subsidiary figures) a central part of the scene. Instead, he emphasizes Christ’s limp body by making it the largest and most central figure. Continually, he uses brilliant lighting for the body of Christ and the white cloth around him to set him apart from the other figures and mark him as the most important figure rather than the Virgin. He also uses this technique in his later version of The Lamentation of Christ in 1617 (Figure 3).

Further adding to the emotional drama of the piece is Rubens’s dramatic staggering of the figures surrounding Christ’s body. Rubens rejected the earlier examples that composed figural groups in static symmetry and embraced the overlapping style of Correggio, Barocci, and the Venetians in which “the diverse positions of the figures, their energized postures, and varied effects of light and shade make certain elements dominate and others subordinate”. There is an incredible sense of solemnity in the postures of the figures that really defines the character of the composition: the figures do not stand upright, but instead stoop and hunch over so that the composition itself is structured by the bent figures. The figures are also primarily squished to the upper left side of the composition, further emphasizing that they are not standing upright. The hunched figures contribute to the gravity of the image and the heaviness of Christ’s deceased body both physically and psychologically, creating an intense emotion experience for the viewer.

The limp and lifeless body of Christ, supported by the stooping figures, is very different from the upright statue-like depictions of Christ that acts as a type of memorial. Instead, Rubens has twisted Christ’s corpse in an uncomfortable contrapposto pose that evokes an intense emotional response in the viewer, especially when paired with the deep sense of melancholy expressed by the grieving figures. And although Christ’s body is presented naturalistically in the Northern fashion, the contorted pose it takes is reminiscent of many of the idealized Italianate figures Rubens studied in Italy—making one wonder if he chose this pose in order to practice the contrapposto he saw in the Laocoön sculpture he studied so intently while in Rome (Figure 2). By using bright impasto highlighting and creating gleaming flesh for Christ’s body, the eye of the viewer is drawn in a circular motion around the canvas allowing the viewer to see his varied brushwork and rich coloring learned from the Venetian masters and emblematic of the Baroque style. Index of Images Figure 1

Peter-Paul Rubens, The Lamentation of Christ, 1605. Oil on copper. 11 x 9.5 in. (27.94 x 24.13 cm). Jacksonville, The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens. (Cummer.org)

Figure 2

Laocoön, 1st century BC. Marble copy after Hellenistic Original. 8ft (2.4m). Vatican City, Vatican. (Wikipedia.org)

Figure 3 Peter-Paul Rubens, The Lamentation of Christ, 1617-1618. Oil on panel. 54.3 x 38.6 in. (138 x 98 cm). Antwerp, Royal Museum of Fine Arts. (Wikipedia.org)