Oil Painting-p.hippolyte Flandrin-st Jean Consolating The Virgin After The Crucifixion-1890

PAUL HIPPOLYTE FLANDRIN 1856-1921 Saint John consoling the Virgin after the crucifixion OIL PAINTING ON CANVAS 64 cm x 80 cm 76 cm x 93 cm in a very beautiful neo-baroque frame gilded with gold leaf (This is not is not its original frame) This painting is not signed, but comes from a set of works by the artist, Paul Hippolyte Flandrin Son of the great Lyon painter Hippolyte Flandrin, Paul Hippolyte was the favorite disciple of Ingres whose he was also the student. His passion was sacred art. Student of Henri Lehmann and probably of his father (but not of Ingres as his Wikipedia entry states), Paul Hippolyte exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1882, then at the Lyon Salon, paintings where the predominant religious inspiration. In 1886, he received the gold medal from the Association of Christian Art at the Rouen Salon. One of his large paintings, Jesus weeping over the city (1904), hangs in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés church. In our painting, Flandrin gives here a very naturalistic representation of the day after the Passion: the Virgin contemplates with pain the crown of thorns and the nails which were used in the crucifixion of Jesus. Near her Saint John tries to ease her pain. We make the hypothesis of John the Evangelist because he accompanied Mary in all the episodes of the Passion: at the foot of the cross, then during the descent from the cross and the lamentation that followed. It was again John who stood at the side of the Virgin at the time of her death and who then attended the Assumption. We can also notice the naturalistic description of the costumes which are the same as those worn by simple Palestinian inhabitants and no longer rich clothes like those we see in classical paintings evoking this same theme. Our naturalistic scene marks the difference between Paul-Hippolyte and his father's paintings. Hippolytus and the painters of his time tried to rediscover the primitive flavor and hieratic dignity of the artists of the Renaissance. Paul-Hippolyte invites us to enter a credible episode, such as we could have witnessed if we had been its contemporaries (or such as Hollywood cinema will attempt to reconstruct in films such as Ben Hur or Quo vadis!). He makes these sacred figures, deeply, human. But at the back, the shadows cast on the wall give the image its mystical intensity.