By Jen Bidding Venmans
I just returned from a visit to Rome where I was happy to find Vincent van Gogh’s Pietà as part of the Vatican Museum’s vast art collection. A lot of the paintings in the Vatican’s contemporary collection were made by donation and this one comes from a private collection in California. Van Gogh painted this for his sister a few months before his death in 1890. He was inspired by a lithograph he had of Eugene Delacroix’s Pietà, which is now in the Nasjonalgelleriet in Oslo.
Even though van Gogh’s grandfather and father were both ministers of the Protestant Dutch Reformed Church, this painting is unique because he rarely painted religious subjects. Some people have suggested that this is a self-portrait, is it due to the slight twinge of ginger in the hair? I don’t know, I don’t really see a connection. Van Gogh had made an earlier version of this painting for his brother Theo, which can be seen in the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
I’m not a huge fan of religious art or Pietas but I really enjoyed seeing it from van Gogh’s perspective. To my surprise the Vatican also has a brilliant painting by Francis Bacon, a Kandinsky etching, a Diego Rivera, Salvador Dali, and an Edvard Munch, along with papal designed robes by Matisse.
After Reverend Theodorus van Gogh passed away, van Gogh painted Still Life with Bible depicting his father’s Dutch bible and a copy of Emile Zola’s ‘Joy of Living.” Next to them is an extinguished candle suggesting his father’s demise or perhaps even van Gogh’s lack of faith.
The Art Bureau 