Christ in Majesty and the Four Evangelists - Series of five projects for painted decor, gouache and (5) - Cardboard - 1850-1900

Nineteenth-Century School. The Christ in Majesty and the Four Evangelists. Suite of five decorative painting projects, in gouache and watercolour with gold highlights on stiff board, 59 x 47 cm.

It includes a lunettes en plein cintre (full-arch lunette) and four tympana in a broken arch, with red framing enhanced by black fillets, each underscored by a frieze of polychrome arabesques. Latin inscriptions: S. MATTHEUS, S. MARCUS, S. LUCAS, S JOHANNES.

Unsigned.

These projects belong to the broad movement of church decoration that accompanied the Neo-Gothic revival carried in France by Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879). The outlined drawing, the ample drapery and the hieratic frontal stance of the figures register in the lineage of the Nazarene movement, around Friedrich Overbeck (1789-1869), and Hippolyte Flandrin’s (1809-1864) religious painting.

The lunette, central piece of the program, shows the Christ in Majesty with whitened hair and beard, wearing a red tunic and a blue cape with gem-studded trim. He blesses in Latin and presents the opened book on the Alpha and the Omega; the throne, with violet cushions and eagle-headed terminals, is framed by two ceriferous angels kneeling.

The evangelists, with nimbus and bare feet, are seated and unfold a long blank phylactery, in keeping with the practice of models submitted to the patron before text selection. Saint Matthew, an old man with white beard, is accompanied by a kneeling angel; Saint Mark, in a red tunic and blue cloak, with a reclining winged lion; Saint Luke, in a violet cloak, with the winged ox; Saint John, beardless with long hair, in a turquoise cloak, with the uplifted eagle. The attributes are placed to the left for Matthew and Mark, to the right for Luke and John, suggesting a symmetrical arrangement on either side of Christ. A uniform, grid-like background of diamonds scattered with dots, ranging from bluish gray to green, unifies the whole.

Overall good condition: some stains and oxidations, notably on Saint Luke’s tunic, light wear to the grounds, small soiling at margins and marginal tears, other minor defects.

The program reprises the Maiestas Domini surrounded by the tetramorph (Ezekiel 1, Revelation 4), a major theme of Romanesque apses and portals, according to the distribution fixed by Saint Jerome (c. 347–420). The lunette is suitable for an apse or a chevet wall, the tympana for choir vaults, designed to be viewed from below. Religious decoration projects are most often found isolated, dispersed after execution or lost with studio funds. The present suite preserves the complete program, in a single style and layout. The building for which it was intended remains to be identified.