Manet's Christ Scourged and the Problem of His Religious Paintings

Abstract

In the Manet bibliography down to the present, the artist's religious paintings, which are among his early work, have been given relatively little consideration. Comments and criticisms about them—centering largely on the two paintings of 1864 and 1865: Dead Christ with Angels¹ and Christ Scourged (Fig. 1)—often have derogatory undertones which reflect an attitude shared by most of our contemporary historians and critics.² Such reservations are explained by qualities intrinsic to such a composition as Christ Scourged (Fig. 1) in which Manet attempts a reconciliation of iconographic and compositional conventions of the past with objective portrayal of contemporaneous facts empirically grasped: “Il n'y a qu'une chose de vraie. Faire du premier coup ce qu'on voit.”³ The two aims are not fully reconciled in the resulting composition. But most irksome to past critics was Manet's aesthetic detachment, the lack of devotional appeal of the work. These are faults which, in the eyes of some modern critics, are redeemed by the masterly technique, the purely formal qualities of this and similar works, which bear the stamp of Manet's individuality.⁴ Nevertheless, the style of the large religious paintings of 1864 and 1865 has presented a puzzle to historians down to our time. Their reliance on past precedent has been stressed, with the attendant neglect of their significance as unique contributions to Manet's oeuvre.⁵ In the following study of Christ Scourged (Fig. 1) I shall touch upon both these aspects—the painting's pictorial sources and the originality of its interpretation of the religious theme.