The Pietà (after Delacroix)

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The Pietà (after Delacroix): Vincent van Gogh

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Vincent van Gogh Oil Painting - The Pietà (after Delacroix)

Keywords: Pietà, Delacroix

Work Overview: The Pietà (after Delacroix)
Vincent van Gogh
Date: 1889; Saint-rémy-de-provence, France *
Style: Post-Impressionism
Genre: religious painting
Media: oil, canvas
Dimensions: 60.5 x 73 cm
Location: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Van Gogh, motivated by the book The Imitation of Christ which included depiction of Christ as a suffering servant, worked on reprises of Eugène Delacroix's Pieta and Good Samaritan. Rather than representing "a triumphant Christ in glory," he depicted Christ in his most perilous and painful period, his crucifixion and death.[15] Of capturing the scenes of his religious work from long ago, Van Gogh described Delacroix's perspective of how to paint the historical religious figures: "Eug. Delacroix, when he did a Gethsemane, had been beforehand to see what an olive grove was like on the spot, and the same for the sea whipped up by a strong mistral, and because he must have said to himself, these people we know from history, doges of Venice, crusaders, apostles, holy women, were of the same type as, and lived in a similar way to, their present-day descendants."[16]

Delacroix's influence helped Van Gogh develop artistically and gain knowledge of color theory. To his brother Theo, he wrote: "What I admire so much about Delacroix... is that he makes us feel the life of things, and the expression of movement, that he absolutely dominates his colours."

Van Gogh made the Pietà paintings from a lithograph of Delacroix's painting. The subject and composition from the original remain, but Van Gogh brings his own style to the artwork.[2] Of the Pietà, Van Gogh writes: "The Delacroix is a "Pietà" that is to say the dead Christ with the Mater Dolorosa. The exhausted corpse lies on the ground in the entrance of a cave, the hands held before it on the left side, and the woman is behind it. It is in the evening after a thunderstorm, and that forlorn figure in blue clothes - the loose clothes are agitated by the wind - is sharply outlined against a sky in which violet clouds with golden edges are floating. She too stretches out her empty arms before her in a large gesture of despair, and one sees the good sturdy hands of a working woman. The shape of the figure with its streaming clothes is nearly as broad as it is high. And the face of the dead man is in the shadow - but the pale head of the woman stands out clearly against a cloud - a contrast which causes those two heads to seem like one somber-hued flower and one pale flower, arranged in such a way as mutually to intensify the effect."

The Van Gogh Museum relates how Van Gogh hastily began work on the Pietà: "The Delacroix lithograph La Pietà, as well as several others, fell into my oils and paints and was damaged. This upset me terribly, and I am now busy making a painting of it, as you will see." Although stained, the lithograph survived.

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