Scripture · Romans 12:9-13
Romans 5:8
Pietà (after Delacroix)
But God proves His love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Mary opens her arms above the dead Christ, whose pale body cuts diagonally across blue and yellow cloth. Grief fills the painting through hands, weight and color.
What does Pietà (after Delacroix) show?
Christ’s body slumps against Mary, his reddish hair and beard standing out against pale skin. Her outstretched hands open the composition, while blue fabric and ochre rock press close around them. Van Gogh’s repeated strokes make the clothes and landscape participate in the figures’ strain.
He made this larger version after a lithograph of Delacroix’s Pietà in September 1889. In his letters he described the damaged print that prompted the copies and Mary’s solid, working woman’s hands. Viewers have compared Christ’s coloring with Van Gogh’s own, but he did not state that he intended a self-portrait. The Pietà is a devotional subject, rather than an event described in a single Gospel verse.
Featured in: Was Van Gogh a Christian? His Faith in 11 Paintings, and the Café Terrace “Last Supper”
What does Romans 5:8 mean?
Romans 5:8 presents Christ’s death as the demonstration of God’s love for people while they are still sinners. In the surrounding passage, Paul contrasts that love with the rare human willingness to die even for a good person. The emphasis falls on God’s initiative.
The painting’s grief lets the cost of that claim occupy the viewer’s attention. Mary holding Christ is not an illustration of Paul’s setting or a detail supplied by Romans. The pairing joins a devotional image of the dead Christ with Paul’s account of the love shown through His death.
Romans 5:8 gives the dead Christ in this devotional image a context of love offered before it is deserved.
Sources
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, s0168V1962.
Was Van Gogh a Christian? His Faith in 11 Paintings. Painting history and the limits of the religious interpretation, with primary letters and museum sources.
Also from Romans:The Entombment of ChristReturn of the Prodigal Son
Continue looking:Saint Peter and Cornelius the Centurion