Pietà (after Delacroix)
Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, September 1889
Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890)
oil on canvas,
73 cm x 60.5 cm
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
Van Gogh based his Pietà
on a lithograph of a painting by Eugène Delacroix. This image of the
Virgin Mary mourning the dead Christ is, however, more a variation on
the original work than a copy. Van Gogh has taken Delacroix’s theme and
composition and added his own colour and personal signature.
The
work was prompted by an accident: ‘that lithograph of Delacroix, the
Pietà, with other sheets had fallen into some oil and paint and got
spoiled. I was sad about it – then in the meantime I occupied myself
painting it, and you’ll see it one day’. The lithograph, complete with
stain, has survived.
Van
Gogh was living in the asylum in Saint-Rémy when he painted this work.
It is quite possible that the sick and ‘misunderstood’ artist identified
with the suffering Christ: ‘I am not indifferent, and in the very
suffering religious thoughts sometimes console me a great deal’, he
wrote to his brother Theo. The painter’s resemblance to the red-bearded
Christ figure in this Pietà has not therefore gone unnoticed. | © Van Gogh Museum