Le Christ Vert
Maurice Denis
MAURICE DENIS, 1890. OIL ON CANVAS.
As a child, Maurice Denis had only two passions – religion and art. It seemed clear to him that his path was to combine the two, to follow in the footsteps of the great Renaissance monk-cum-artist Fra Angelo and make religious art that elevated the holy in the minds of men. Yet, before this work was painted he was in a period of deep questioning, having co-founded the Nabi group the same year he found himself surrounded by the decadence and debauchery of the artists studio, and reluctantly drawn to it. Art and religion seemed, for the first time in his life, at odds with each other and it was only in the process of creating this work, and others in the series, that he unified the Cloister and the Studio in his mind. “I believe”, he said, “that art must sanctify nature; I believe that vision without the Spirt is vain; and it is the mission of the aesthete to erect beautiful things into immutable icons”.