Marc Chagall (1887-1985) - David et Bethsabée

Magnificent paper exam in Japan.

Technique: Lithography
Support: mother-of-pearl Japanese paper
Numbering: 39/50
Signature: Hand signed
Dimensions: 59x43.2cm

Excellent condition

Authentication: Work sold with a certificate of authenticity. Mourlot 936. Blind stamp Mourlot Paris.

UPS express

Information about the work: The scene of David and Bathsheba, taken from the Second Book of Samuel, remains one of the most troubling episodes of the Old Testament. It depicts King David, from his palace, seeing Bathsheba bathing. He summons her to him, and he unites with her despite her being married to Uriah, one of his soldiers who is at the front. When he learns she is pregnant, David tries to conceal his fault by recalling Uriah, but he refuses loyally to return to his home during wartime. The king then arranges for Uriah's death in battle, marries Bathsheba, but loses the child born from their union. It is only with the later birth of Solomon that this tragic story is soothed into a form of dynastic and spiritual continuity.

When Marc Chagall captured this episode in 1979, in a color lithograph, he was neither seeking to condemn nor to judge, but to suspend the story in a light of inner reconciliation. Instead of emphasizing fault or tragedy, he places at the center a tender, unreal couple, immersed in a floating atmosphere characteristic of his visual universe. Everything in the composition — the deep colors, gentle faces, symbolic elements in the background — evokes the poetic transfiguration of the biblical story into a meditation on love.