I just discovered this painting and I am in love..
I saw this painting in passing on a PBS art history program called "History of Western Art (with Michael Wood)"
it was unnamed and I had to do some research (searched Impressionist "Body of Christ" which led me to "Pieta" who was a renaissance painter who made the famous statue which inspired this painting and came up with Gaugain which I should have remembered cuz the show was highlighting Gaugain's work)
This painting perfectly captures the essence of Christianity, that the Suffering Christ, who though being God, died in the arms of inferior human beings, represents the universal suffering of the human heart. This image is like an icon of a shitty day or a depressed afternoon..
when human being suffer grief, sorrow, angst, depression, they are entering into the sufferings of Christ, or more actually when Christ suffered the Cross and died He entered into the suffering of humans, that we could all mutually relate. When we suffer (those who are Christians), we must remember this Suffering and Dying Christ, and in our sighs of sorrow and frustration, we must constantly visualize this.
Notice the body of Christ rests not in the hands of Mary as with Pieta's original (which is the theological meaning of that work, that Mary held the body as we humans can hold His body in the Communion) but on the very shoulders of the Breton woman while she works there, carrying not only the load of her daily burdens, her daily grief, but these grievous burdens of life are transformed into the Body of the Suffering Christ, that we bear His Suffering on our shoulders as the heavy, sorrowful load it can become.
I have not been so in love non-Icon religious art since I discovered
Antony Fablo
