The Churches of Paris, from Clovis to Charles XBeale, Sophia
History
The Churches of Paris, from Clovis to Charles X
Beale, Sophia
Church buildings -- France -- Paris; Paris (France) -- Buildings, structures, etc.
In the treatment of Jonah, the type of The Resurrection, the painter has
avoided what must always be a difficulty--the great fish. Those who saw
this _tableau_ years ago at Ober-Ammergau must remember that even the
good souls of that village could not divest the subject of the ludicrous
element, and they did well, in 1890, to omit it. But Flandrin has got
over the difficulty by making his prophet walking upon a beach, with
waves breaking upon the shore around him. He has been ejected from the
whale, and is giving thanks for his deliverance. _Signum Jonæ Prophetæ_
(Matthew xii. 39).
_That the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs and of the same body, and
partakers of his promise in Christ by the Gospel_, is the legend of the
charge to Peter. _Gentes esse cohaeredes ... promissionis in Christo_
(Ephesians iii. 6). In the foreground kneels S. Peter, to whom Our Lord
gives the keys of heaven and hell: but the rest of the Apostles stand
around, and form part of the group: _Feed my sheep._ The type is The
Dispersion of the Nations subsequent to the building of Babel; and
Flandrin has most graphically described the wonder and amazement of the
crowd, who, not being able to converse any longer, leave the town and
scatter themselves over the face of the earth.
[Illustration: ADAM AND EVE.]
Above the frieze of subject-pictures are numerous personages in the
panels which surround the windows, all from the Old Testament: Adam and
Eve, Jacob Blessing his Children, Job, Samson, Aaron, Joshua, Miriam,
Deborah, Judith, and ending with John the Baptist. Adam and Eve are,
perhaps, the finest of these figures. Adam stands erect, thoughtful,
repentant, and ashamed; but his clasped right hand seems to indicate
steadfastness of purpose to retrieve the past. Eve abandons herself to
sorrow, and leans upon her husband's shoulder as if resolving in the
future to depend upon him. The treatment is at once almost Classic in
its simplicity, and realistic in its naturalism; the only discordant
note being a something in the way in which Eve's hair falls upon her
forehead, an echo, as it were, of the model, and the ugly fashion of
dressing the hair peculiar to the thirties and forties, which so often
shocks us in the Nymphs and Venuses by Etty, and gives them an unclothed
appearance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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