MUNICACZYS GREAT PICTURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8928, 17 December 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

MUNICACZYS GREAT PICTURE.

THE "CHRIST ON CALVARY 1'

MERITS AND ITS DEFECTS.

Munkaczy's painting of "Christ on Calvary," now on exhibition in New York, is attracting a large number of spectators. It is a far more dramatic and powerful work than its predecessor, the "• Christ Before Pilate," and will be generally more acceptable to the public. The scene is the climacteric one of the "Divine Tragedy." On the summit of Calvary, facing the west, stand the three crosses bearing thoir burdens of suffering, human and divine. Behind them lieu Jerusalem, its roofs and towers faintly illumined by the lurid sunlight which falls from angry clouds. Near the Saviour's cross stands ot. John in a ruby coloured robe, and at its feet kneel Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mother, the latter bathing the dead Christ's feet with tears. To the left the high priests and Pharisees ara turning homeward, while in the middle background the carious crowd press forward and are checked by a Roman soldier's spear. Behind the crosses a cohort of Roman soldiers is march' iug down to the city, their spears and helmets faintly gleaming in the eullen light. The cross wick Christ upon it towers high above all else, the light through the rift in the stormcloud falling upon it. This is the scene dramatically told. The Saviour has just expired the agony is over, and now follow the darkness and the earthquake shock. The figure and face of Christ, of course, first hold the visistor'a attention. The attenuated frame, nude, save for a strip of white cloth about the loius, will be a study for the life classes of the art schools. It is generally conoeded to be a good anatmonicai study. The face is that of a middle-agod man, with Bunken cheeks and eyes, and an organised expression. It is essentially human and lacks, oven more than the face of the " Christ before Pilate," any touch of the divine. Indeed, it may be questioned whether the artist did not more wisely determine to portray only the extremity of human suffering. The figures and faces of the two malefactors on either side are realistically coarse and repellant. Tho faces of the Virgin and Mary Magdalene are hidden, while that of Martha is in full light. She ia robed in white, the Virgin in black, while Mary Magdalen'es wealth of gold-red hair streams backward over a deep-blue garment. Behind them the executioner, with ladder and hatchet, a coarse, brutal fellow, stands looking on the scene, the ladder cutting sharply across the centre of the canvas. JUi the front of the mob behind tho executioner stands a Centurion gazing fixedly on the Saviour, and at the left walk two scribes converging, a rich Pharisee mounted on a gaily caparisoned horse, and an elderly Hebrew, said to bo Judas Iscariot, is running rapidly away, fliero are about fifty figures and heads in tue canvas, almost all strangely individualised and each and every one worthy of close study, The composition is decidely daring and original, The left of the canvas crowded with figures, the middle right with it 3 ccntral points of interest, the crosses, leaves the extreme right with only the landscape somewhat unbalanced. The colour notes are struck in the deep black of the Virgin's robe, the iutense white of the cloth around the Saviour's loans, the red of the scribe's cap repeated in St. John's robe, and the light blue of Judas' garments, which is repeated on a graded scale to the deep blue of Mary Magdalene's attire. The colouring ia rich and clear, and the artist has used his favourite bitumen more sparingly than in most of his works. The ruby of St. John's robe ia in itself a study. The canvas, which measures 17 feet by 24, is really a dramatic panorama strongly conceived and as strongly executed, but bearing to the true artistio eyo a by no means over-pleasant scene of skilful jugglery by a master of the art of effect in painting, rather than of feeling.