Pushkin Museum Unveils Images of the Bible

The excitement surrounding frantic last-minute preparations before the reopening of the Tretyakov could easily obscure "The Artist Reads the Bible," a worthwhile exhibition which opened at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts on Thursday.


That same day specialists at the Tretyakov were maneuvering Alexander Ivanov's neck-achingly enormous canvas "The Appearance of Christ to the People" onto a piece of equipment to attach it to the wall. Aware that they were handling what is arguably Russia's greatest religious painting, the Tretyakov staff had an unmistakable air of superiority.


But not to be overshadowed by the Tretyakov's much-hyped and long-awaited Dec. 15 opening, the Pushkin Museum has produced a fascinating juxtaposition of the different ways in which artists have viewed Christianity.


Too bad the organizers could not have come up with a more inspired title for the showing than "The Artist Reads the Bible." Not only is the title an injustice, it is also misleading, as the exhibition starts with the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when artists were not so much "reading the Bible" as working within an established iconographical tradition in which sources included apocryphal texts and hagiography.


It is important to remember the criteria imposed by this artistic tradition, and the exhibition does this with "The Last Supper" by Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770). With its array of mock horror poses, the painting may seem comical now, but it would have satisfied the demands of Tiepolo's contemporaries.


Despite Tiepolo's conformity to tradition, he includes a charming realistic touch in the form of a dog who flees the histrionics around the table with a chicken bone in his mouth.


Such veracity became increasingly dominant, reaching scandalous proportions in the art of Rembrandt (1606-1669). The exhibition's selection of Rembrandt prints illustrates the devastating effect the artist's new realism had on hitherto sacrosanct religious themes. His 1634 etching "Joseph and Potipher's Wife" shows Joseph recoiling in disgust from a semi-naked woman who pulls him back toward the bed. Her night-dress has ridden up above her waist and her legs are splayed in desperate abandon: Rembrandt, driving the message home, adopts an exceptionally unflattering viewpoint near her feet.


Equally harsh but true is Rembrandt's 1638 etching "Adam and Eve -- The Fall." Gone is the muscularity in an engraving on the same theme by Durer (1471-1528), that hangs a few feet away. Instead Rembrandt shows an aging Eve who dominates the composition with her deliciously sagging tummy. Adam, no superman himself, nags her not to eat the forbidden fruit -- a timeless notion of man chastising his devil-may-care wife for ordering pudding.


The prints lead to Russian paintings from the 19th and 20th centuries, and it is refreshing to be able to compare Russian and European works side by side in a country which tends to separate the two, not least in its permanent collections.


The Russian exhibits include one of the exhibition's highlights -- "The Crucifixion," by Nikolai Ge (1831-1894) which, rarely seen in Russia, is on loan from the Musee d'Orsay.


Ge, like many 19th-century artists, treated the Bible as a historical document which described living, breathing people, and he depicted their mental anguish and physical torment with new, human empathy.


"Christ and the Thief," a sketch for the painting "Golgotha" (1893), shows Christ looking heavenward, his head cradled in his hands in a fruitless attempt to mitigate the agony. His despair is highlighted by the thief, who stares blankly at the viewer with a bouncer's muscular impassivity. The drawing illustrates not only Ge's critical innovation, but also his skill as a draughtsman, for the anatomical tension is as evident in Christ's body as it is in that of the naked thief, even though the former is covered in drapery.


Ge's drawings are on view in Russia for the first time and come complete with a fascinating history. Taken to Europe in 1899 by Ge's son, who despaired of his father's work ever passing Russian censorship, they eventually vanished. The Swiss collector Christophe Bollman found them, at the time unidentified, on the floor of a Geneva flea-market (you can still see the traces of footprints) in the mid 1970s. He has lent them to the Pushkin, allowing viewers -- in theory -- to study them alongside Ge's paintings.


In practice, the drawings and paintings are on different floors, which is a senseless waste of a unique opportunity.


In fact the whole layout of the exhibition is confusing. The organizers have had to cope with disparate spaces and have failed to establish continuity. There is a sense of relief when you finally reach the 20th century, which includes paintings by Petrov-Vodkin, Lentulov and Filonov, and prints by Ernst Barlach.


Particularly arresting is "The Sacrifice of Abraham," one of a series of etchings by Marc Chagall (1887-1985) which was published in Paris in 1956.


The image is brutal in the extreme. Abraham crouches, knife poised over the throat of Isaac, whose helpless white body lies at the very bottom of the composition, emphasizing its vulnerability. There is no doubt that Abraham is prepared to kill his son. Moreover, the angel who intervenes at the last moment is menacing -- the agent of a menacing God who tested Abraham's faith in so chilling a fashion in the first place.


Even Rembrandt avoided such cruel realism. The Dutchman's etching of the subject (1655) shows Abraham as a frightened, confused old man who holds the knife at arm's length, reluctant to carry out the order. He clutches his son's head to his chest and shields his eyes, and is stopped by an angel who is not menacing, but reassuring.


The staunchest Tretyakov supporters cannot fail to be impressed by the Pushkin exhibition's diversity. Even their revered Ivanov is represented in several oil sketches for "The Appearance of Christ."


One, a sketch of two nude boys, belongs to the 1850s series of naked youths which has provoked much fashionable gender-political debate on the artist's possible homosexuality. Another is an early compositional sketch.


Although this inevitably pales in comparison to the finished canvas that was being rotated so gingerly at the Tretyakov, at least these pieces are accessible to the general public. Cynics who fear that the latest news of leaking pipes in the Tretyakov will postpone its opening yet further will compliment the Pushkin's exhibition not least for managing to open on the right day.