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Lot Essay
The pre-eminent Russian Orientalist of the XIX century, Vasily Vereshchagin was revered for his superlative talent and penchant for universal subject matter as pertinent to the Russian Empire as it was to Europe. Exhibitions of his artwork were considered major cultural events worldwide and never ceased to draw thousands upon thousands of visitors. By the 1891 New York auction, at which The Holy Family was first sold, Vereshchagin's success had expanded far beyond the borders of Russia. The Daily Telegraph branded him 'a great artist'; The Times wrote of his 'genius' for painting; the famous French critic Claretti wrote in Le Figaro that Vereshchagin was 'an individual who stands out from the common ranks, I know no second such a gifted nature amongst artists'; the Deutsches Montagsblatt enthused, 'When you happen upon [his] transfixing paintings, it unwillingly enters your head that here before us is the highest of what human creativity, human art, can achieve'; and Harper's Weekly insisted that his work 'is one of those contemporary miracles; no other modern artist has created such a multitude of inspiring and elevating paintings’ (A. Lebedev, Vasilii Vasilievich Vereshchagin, Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo [Life and work], Moscow, 1958, p. 6).
It is important to understand Vereshchagin's interest in Biblical subject matter within the context of the general surge of interest in the archaeology of the Holy Land in the XIX century. In 1847, the first Russian Orthodox Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem was sent to conduct archaeological research and facilitate pilgrimages from Russia to the Holy Land. The Mission subsequently acquired land in Palestine, organising Slavonic Orthodox services for the several hundred Russian pilgrims that travelled to the Holy Land every year. Pilgrimages to the Holy Land were promoted heavily and successfully, to the extent that by the end of the XIX century some 10,000 citizens of the Russian Empire made this journey every year. Against this backdrop, Vereshchagin was one of a number of late-XIX century European artists - including William Holman Hunt and Vereshchagin's own teacher Jean-Léon Gérôme - who were determined to bring a new historical and archaeological accuracy to the depiction of sacred events.
The enormously popular work Vie de Jésus by Ernest Renan published in 1863 and translated into English the same year, sought to approach Jesus’ life from a historical point of view and represent Jesus humanised, free from the Gospel’s miracles. We know from Vereshchagin’s letters to his wife that he read Renan’s work and it had influenced his artistic searches, expressed in full in his Palestinian series. Contrary to the Renaissance tradition of depicting The Holy Family with an infant Jesus adored by Mary and Joseph, Vereshchagin challenges the viewer with his own interpretation of the subject, showing Jesus as an adult, surrounded by his family, all deprived of divine attributes. The artist approaches the subject from a rationalist point of view and reveals the humble origins of the Son of God. In a small courtyard of Nazareth, hidden from the midday sun, the family is engaged in their daily activities: Joseph, who stands with his back to the viewer, is being assisted at carpentry by Jesus’ middle brother and wood chips litter the courtyard; two younger brothers are caught playing in the middle of the scene, with chickens scouting the ground for grain and laundry being hung to dry. Captured seated to the side, Jesus attentively reads the holy scrolls, while Mary nurses a child, observed by Jesus’ two younger sisters.
Vereshchagin’s own essay 'On Progress in Art' laments the continued tradition of a lack of realism in religious painting: 'the manner of placing God and the Saints on clouds, as though these were chairs and stools, and not substances whose physical condition is well known to us'. While praising the old masters for their technique, he simultaneously lambasts their willingness to ignore the historical realities: 'For instance in the representation of the Apostles, whose personalities are so clear and convincing in the Gospels, we recognise in their forms, face and attitudes - particularly in Titian's pictures - not modest humble fishermen, but fine Italian models of athletic appearance' (V. Vereshchagin, Second Appendix to the Catalogue of the Verestchagin Exhibition: Realism, New York, 188, pp. 11-12). Vereshchagin was determined to address religious subject matter with the same degree of realism he advocated in all his work: 'Can anyone say that I am careless about the types, about the costumes, about the landscape of the scenes represented by me? That I don't actually study out beforehand the personages, the surrounding figuring in my works? Hardly so. Can anyone say that, with me, any scene taking place in reality in the broad sunlight had been painted by studio light - that a scene, taking place under the frosty skies of the North, is reproduced in the warm inclosure [sic] of four walls. Hardly so' (Ibid, p. 5).
Vereshchagin’s meticulous archaeological and historical approach in depicting the Holy Family was appreciated by a number of contemporary critics, who enthused about the present canvas: ‘The picture comes nearer to being a representation of facts than do those of the same subject by Raphael and other masters of the Renaissance, who merely painted comely Italian women in conventional robes of blue and red, and beautiful children; or than those by Rembrandt do, who painted the common people of his native town in their everyday costume as the companions of Christ’ (‘The Verestchagin Exhibition’, The Nation, 22 November 1888, p. 424) and ‘In representing a daily scene in their prosaic life, Vereshchagin was explicitly challenging the concept of the Holy Family, although he had great respect for the idea of Christianity and its founders’ (Verestchagin, Realism, New York, 1889-1890, p. 14).
Due to censorship in Russia, Vereshchagin was aware that he would never be able to show The Holy Family in his motherland. As such, this painting, along with his other evangelical work - The Resurrection of Christ (destroyed) and The Trilogy of Executions (Crucifixion by the Romans sold by Christie’s for £1,721,250, 28 November 2011), were first shown in Vienna in 1885. The reception of the Palestinian canvasses by the Viennese Catholic Diocese was far less favourable that the aforementioned reaction of the American critics. Shortly after the opening of the exhibition in October 1885 The Holy Family and The Resurrection of Christ were condemned as blasphemous by the Catholic Church and branded irreverent. The catalogue of the exhibition was rapidly brought to the attention of Cardinal Cölestin Ganglbauer, who immediately insisted on either the removal of the two painting from public view or the closure of the entire exhibition. This sparked a protracted conflict between Vereshchagin and Vienna’s Catholic Diocese, which would eventually exhaust the artist’s spirit and deter him from exhibiting these canvasses in other Catholic countries. In his letter to the Press, Ganglbauer reiterated the fundamental of Catholic dogma, denounced Vereshchagin’s interpretations of the Scriptures deceitful and appealed to Catholics to boycott the exhibition as it rendered a profound insult to the Catholic Faith.
The Cardinal’s letter summoned a public response from the artist, who wrote that Ganglbauer’s criticism of the paintings honoured him and he understood the Cardinal’s resentment about the discrepancy between his own interpretation in the pieces and official Catholic doctrine. ‘For Vereshchagin, the conflict between Catholic doctrine and the New Testament was even greater since the latter holds that the Holy Family consisted of many members; he cited various passages from the New Testament to support his contention that in addition to Jesus, the first child, the Holy Virgin had seven or eight children. To resolve the doubts and perplexities that spawned the conflict, Vereshchagin suggested that a Universal Assembly be called immediately to settle the controversy, and he pleaded for religious tolerance pending the convening of the assembly’ (A. Lebedev, V. V. Vereshchagin. Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo [Life and work] 1842-1904, Moscow, 1972, p. 340).
Despite the confrontations with the Catholic church, the exhibition continued to draw large crowds. As V. Darooshian notes in his 1993 study of Vereshchagin’s oeuvre ‘One newspaper reported that the exhibit became a focal point for the whole of Vienna; huge crowds flocked to see it and gathered around the two paintings. Another newspaper observed that if Vereshchagin had called the painting The Interior of a Home in Nazareth, no one would have taken it for a representation of the Holy Family. The Viennese press defended Vereshchagin’s right to express his interpretation of the scriptures. When asked if he would remove his paintings, Vereshchagin replied that he had devoted a great deal of time to them, and would do so only if compelled to by the Austrian police’. As the exhibition attendance grew rapidly, the Catholic Church held a three-day mass of repentance and a religious procession to atone for the ‘sin’ of Vereshchagin’s works. One Catholic monk splashed acid at six paintings, whose frames and burnt canvasses required repair. The damage was not serious, although the ‘whole right half’ of The Resurrection of Christ needed reworking. A French newspaper Le Figaro published a caricature drawing of Vereshchagin surrounded by Catholics and burned atop of a pyramid of his paintings, hinting in the caption that the artist was fortunate to be living in those day as in other time his confrontation with the Church Fathers would have ended differently (Ibid, p. 110).
In response to Jesuit attacks on his paintings, Vereshchagin alluded to the concept of Mary’s virginity, which Jesus, the apostles Peter and Paul, and the New Testament did not mention ‘during her whole life’, took shape substantially later and could be ‘viewed as an attractive and poetic heresy’. That Matthew 1:25 stated that ‘before the birth of Jesus Mary did not know Joseph’ did not preclude Mary giving subsequent birth to children by Joseph; and since Christ, the apostles, and the New Testament affirmed the existence of children who were born later, Vereshchagin considered the issue of Jesus’ brothers and sisters resolved’. (Ibid, p. 109). Vereshchagin’s response did not bring the argument with the Catholic Church to an end and succeeded in making it more bitter. A frustrated Vereshchagin realised that he could not continue to exhibit his evangelical works and concluded: ‘What I had to experience in Vienna was quite enough. That is why I did not exhibit those paintings in Budapest.’ (A. Lebedev, V. V. Vereshchagin. Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo [Life and work] 1842-1904, Moscow, 1972, p. 226). Even after the closure of the Viennese exhibition in November, the controversy around the paintings persisted, and as such the artist took a break and would only show those works in the United States.
The Holy Family, along with a number of Vereshchagin's finest paintings, was exhibited in Vienna 1885, in London in 1887 and subsequently at the American Art Galleries in New York in November 1888. On view in New York for two months, Vereshchagin's American show was an incredible success. From New York, the exhibition travelled to Chicago, St Louis, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston. During this time, hundreds of thousands of visitors attended the show. When the tour ended in 1891, the works returned to New York City, where the entire collection of 110 paintings, including The Holy Family, was auctioned off for $84,300. In November 2011 Christie’s has successfully sold for £1,721,250 one of the major paintings of the Palestinian series - Crucifixion by the Romans – thus underlining the importance of the subject in Vereshchagin’s artistic oeuvre.
It is important to understand Vereshchagin's interest in Biblical subject matter within the context of the general surge of interest in the archaeology of the Holy Land in the XIX century. In 1847, the first Russian Orthodox Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem was sent to conduct archaeological research and facilitate pilgrimages from Russia to the Holy Land. The Mission subsequently acquired land in Palestine, organising Slavonic Orthodox services for the several hundred Russian pilgrims that travelled to the Holy Land every year. Pilgrimages to the Holy Land were promoted heavily and successfully, to the extent that by the end of the XIX century some 10,000 citizens of the Russian Empire made this journey every year. Against this backdrop, Vereshchagin was one of a number of late-XIX century European artists - including William Holman Hunt and Vereshchagin's own teacher Jean-Léon Gérôme - who were determined to bring a new historical and archaeological accuracy to the depiction of sacred events.
The enormously popular work Vie de Jésus by Ernest Renan published in 1863 and translated into English the same year, sought to approach Jesus’ life from a historical point of view and represent Jesus humanised, free from the Gospel’s miracles. We know from Vereshchagin’s letters to his wife that he read Renan’s work and it had influenced his artistic searches, expressed in full in his Palestinian series. Contrary to the Renaissance tradition of depicting The Holy Family with an infant Jesus adored by Mary and Joseph, Vereshchagin challenges the viewer with his own interpretation of the subject, showing Jesus as an adult, surrounded by his family, all deprived of divine attributes. The artist approaches the subject from a rationalist point of view and reveals the humble origins of the Son of God. In a small courtyard of Nazareth, hidden from the midday sun, the family is engaged in their daily activities: Joseph, who stands with his back to the viewer, is being assisted at carpentry by Jesus’ middle brother and wood chips litter the courtyard; two younger brothers are caught playing in the middle of the scene, with chickens scouting the ground for grain and laundry being hung to dry. Captured seated to the side, Jesus attentively reads the holy scrolls, while Mary nurses a child, observed by Jesus’ two younger sisters.
Vereshchagin’s own essay 'On Progress in Art' laments the continued tradition of a lack of realism in religious painting: 'the manner of placing God and the Saints on clouds, as though these were chairs and stools, and not substances whose physical condition is well known to us'. While praising the old masters for their technique, he simultaneously lambasts their willingness to ignore the historical realities: 'For instance in the representation of the Apostles, whose personalities are so clear and convincing in the Gospels, we recognise in their forms, face and attitudes - particularly in Titian's pictures - not modest humble fishermen, but fine Italian models of athletic appearance' (V. Vereshchagin, Second Appendix to the Catalogue of the Verestchagin Exhibition: Realism, New York, 188, pp. 11-12). Vereshchagin was determined to address religious subject matter with the same degree of realism he advocated in all his work: 'Can anyone say that I am careless about the types, about the costumes, about the landscape of the scenes represented by me? That I don't actually study out beforehand the personages, the surrounding figuring in my works? Hardly so. Can anyone say that, with me, any scene taking place in reality in the broad sunlight had been painted by studio light - that a scene, taking place under the frosty skies of the North, is reproduced in the warm inclosure [sic] of four walls. Hardly so' (Ibid, p. 5).
Vereshchagin’s meticulous archaeological and historical approach in depicting the Holy Family was appreciated by a number of contemporary critics, who enthused about the present canvas: ‘The picture comes nearer to being a representation of facts than do those of the same subject by Raphael and other masters of the Renaissance, who merely painted comely Italian women in conventional robes of blue and red, and beautiful children; or than those by Rembrandt do, who painted the common people of his native town in their everyday costume as the companions of Christ’ (‘The Verestchagin Exhibition’, The Nation, 22 November 1888, p. 424) and ‘In representing a daily scene in their prosaic life, Vereshchagin was explicitly challenging the concept of the Holy Family, although he had great respect for the idea of Christianity and its founders’ (Verestchagin, Realism, New York, 1889-1890, p. 14).
Due to censorship in Russia, Vereshchagin was aware that he would never be able to show The Holy Family in his motherland. As such, this painting, along with his other evangelical work - The Resurrection of Christ (destroyed) and The Trilogy of Executions (Crucifixion by the Romans sold by Christie’s for £1,721,250, 28 November 2011), were first shown in Vienna in 1885. The reception of the Palestinian canvasses by the Viennese Catholic Diocese was far less favourable that the aforementioned reaction of the American critics. Shortly after the opening of the exhibition in October 1885 The Holy Family and The Resurrection of Christ were condemned as blasphemous by the Catholic Church and branded irreverent. The catalogue of the exhibition was rapidly brought to the attention of Cardinal Cölestin Ganglbauer, who immediately insisted on either the removal of the two painting from public view or the closure of the entire exhibition. This sparked a protracted conflict between Vereshchagin and Vienna’s Catholic Diocese, which would eventually exhaust the artist’s spirit and deter him from exhibiting these canvasses in other Catholic countries. In his letter to the Press, Ganglbauer reiterated the fundamental of Catholic dogma, denounced Vereshchagin’s interpretations of the Scriptures deceitful and appealed to Catholics to boycott the exhibition as it rendered a profound insult to the Catholic Faith.
The Cardinal’s letter summoned a public response from the artist, who wrote that Ganglbauer’s criticism of the paintings honoured him and he understood the Cardinal’s resentment about the discrepancy between his own interpretation in the pieces and official Catholic doctrine. ‘For Vereshchagin, the conflict between Catholic doctrine and the New Testament was even greater since the latter holds that the Holy Family consisted of many members; he cited various passages from the New Testament to support his contention that in addition to Jesus, the first child, the Holy Virgin had seven or eight children. To resolve the doubts and perplexities that spawned the conflict, Vereshchagin suggested that a Universal Assembly be called immediately to settle the controversy, and he pleaded for religious tolerance pending the convening of the assembly’ (A. Lebedev, V. V. Vereshchagin. Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo [Life and work] 1842-1904, Moscow, 1972, p. 340).
Despite the confrontations with the Catholic church, the exhibition continued to draw large crowds. As V. Darooshian notes in his 1993 study of Vereshchagin’s oeuvre ‘One newspaper reported that the exhibit became a focal point for the whole of Vienna; huge crowds flocked to see it and gathered around the two paintings. Another newspaper observed that if Vereshchagin had called the painting The Interior of a Home in Nazareth, no one would have taken it for a representation of the Holy Family. The Viennese press defended Vereshchagin’s right to express his interpretation of the scriptures. When asked if he would remove his paintings, Vereshchagin replied that he had devoted a great deal of time to them, and would do so only if compelled to by the Austrian police’. As the exhibition attendance grew rapidly, the Catholic Church held a three-day mass of repentance and a religious procession to atone for the ‘sin’ of Vereshchagin’s works. One Catholic monk splashed acid at six paintings, whose frames and burnt canvasses required repair. The damage was not serious, although the ‘whole right half’ of The Resurrection of Christ needed reworking. A French newspaper Le Figaro published a caricature drawing of Vereshchagin surrounded by Catholics and burned atop of a pyramid of his paintings, hinting in the caption that the artist was fortunate to be living in those day as in other time his confrontation with the Church Fathers would have ended differently (Ibid, p. 110).
In response to Jesuit attacks on his paintings, Vereshchagin alluded to the concept of Mary’s virginity, which Jesus, the apostles Peter and Paul, and the New Testament did not mention ‘during her whole life’, took shape substantially later and could be ‘viewed as an attractive and poetic heresy’. That Matthew 1:25 stated that ‘before the birth of Jesus Mary did not know Joseph’ did not preclude Mary giving subsequent birth to children by Joseph; and since Christ, the apostles, and the New Testament affirmed the existence of children who were born later, Vereshchagin considered the issue of Jesus’ brothers and sisters resolved’. (Ibid, p. 109). Vereshchagin’s response did not bring the argument with the Catholic Church to an end and succeeded in making it more bitter. A frustrated Vereshchagin realised that he could not continue to exhibit his evangelical works and concluded: ‘What I had to experience in Vienna was quite enough. That is why I did not exhibit those paintings in Budapest.’ (A. Lebedev, V. V. Vereshchagin. Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo [Life and work] 1842-1904, Moscow, 1972, p. 226). Even after the closure of the Viennese exhibition in November, the controversy around the paintings persisted, and as such the artist took a break and would only show those works in the United States.
The Holy Family, along with a number of Vereshchagin's finest paintings, was exhibited in Vienna 1885, in London in 1887 and subsequently at the American Art Galleries in New York in November 1888. On view in New York for two months, Vereshchagin's American show was an incredible success. From New York, the exhibition travelled to Chicago, St Louis, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston. During this time, hundreds of thousands of visitors attended the show. When the tour ended in 1891, the works returned to New York City, where the entire collection of 110 paintings, including The Holy Family, was auctioned off for $84,300. In November 2011 Christie’s has successfully sold for £1,721,250 one of the major paintings of the Palestinian series - Crucifixion by the Romans – thus underlining the importance of the subject in Vereshchagin’s artistic oeuvre.