The Orange Christ
Maurice Denis (French, 1870–1943)
1889
- Medium
- oil on board
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Unframed: 23.8 x 18.9 cm (9 3/8 x 7 7/16 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Modern European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
A devout Catholic, Maurice Denis sought to create what he described as “imperishable icons.” In this small painting, he used flat planes of intense colors to conjure emotion in the viewer. Here, a somber group of women, depicted as amorphous black forms, gather around an orange figure of Christ on the cross. The sky is a reddish-purple streaked with green clouds. Pink angels flank the crucified Christ whose head is haloed in brilliant yellow. In this painting, the daring young artist combined religious fervor with unprecedented visual experimentation.
