The stories behind the paintings

Carl Heinrich Bloch painted Christ on the Cross in 1870 on copper, not canvas, for the King’s Oratory at Frederiksborg Castle in Hillerød. It belongs to the cycle of twenty-three scenes from the life of Christ that he made between 1865 and 1879 for the chapel rebuilt after the fire of December 1859. The picture is now in the Museum of National History at the same castle. A later Bloch, Christ with Mocking Soldier (1880) , looks at the hours before the Cross. This one looks at the hour itself. Quick facts Artist: Carl Heinrich Bloch (1834–1890), Copenhagen Date: 1870 Medium: Oil on copper Collection: Museum of National History, Frederiksborg Castle, Hillerød, Denmark Notable fact: One of twenty-three Life of Christ scenes commissioned after the 1859 fire; paid for by the brewer J. C. Jacobsen Carl Heinrich Bloch, Christ on the Cross, 1870. Oil on copper. Museum of National History, Frederiksborg Castle, Hillerød. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. A chapel that had to be...

A crown twisted from thorns. A reed pressed into his hand like a scepter. A soldier's grin inches from his face. Carl Bloch's Christ with Mocking Soldier (1880) takes a scene the Gospels cover in a few verses and narrows it to two men and a joke that has already stopped being funny — because the man wearing the crown is looking straight out of the canvas, and he is not looking away. Quick facts Artist: Carl Bloch (1834–1890) Date: 1880 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: BYU Museum of Art, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah (held privately for decades before its rediscovery) Notable fact: Painted the year after Bloch completed his 23-painting cycle on the life of Christ for the chapel at Frederiksborg Castle Carl Bloch, Christ with Mocking Soldier, 1880. Oil on canvas. BYU Museum of Art. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. A Scene the Gospels Sketch in Three Lines Matthew, Mark, and John each give this moment barely a paragraph: Roman soldiers strip Jesus, th...

Two keys in Christ’s hand. A flock of sheep at his feet. An older apostle kneeling as if the weight of an institution is about to settle on his shoulders. Peter Paul Rubens’s Christ’s Charge to Peter (about 1616) looks like a Bible scene until you notice what he has done: he has fused two separate Gospel moments into one canvas, then hung that fusion over a Brussels tomb. The painting now lives free to the public in London’s Wallace Collection — but it was born as funeral furniture for a man who wanted his afterlife guarded by the keys of Heaven. Quick facts Artist: Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) Date: c. 1616 Medium: Oil on oak panel (139.2 × 114.8 cm) Collection: Wallace Collection, Hertford House, Manchester Square, London (Inv. P93) Notable fact: Commissioned for the tomb of Nicholas Damant in the church of St Gudule, Brussels; conflates Matthew’s Keys of Heaven with John’s “Feed my sheep” Peter Paul Rubens, ...

There is only one rule that will save your life: do not look back. In Genesis, angels pull Lot and his family out of Sodom before fire falls from the sky; the cities of the plain are erased in a single divine storm. Lot's wife turns anyway. The text gives her no name and almost no psychology - only the consequence. She becomes a pillar of salt. In 1852, the English painter John Martin made that instant into an apocalypse so large that the woman herself nearly disappears inside it: a ribbon of scarlet cloud, a city already melting, and, if you know where to look, one small human mistake at the edge of the world. Quick facts Artist: John Martin (1789-1854) Date: 1852 Medium: Oil on canvas, 136.3 x 212.3 cm Collection: Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne (TWCMS: C6975) Notable fact: Martin showed the picture at the Royal Academy in 1852; Victorian viewers already knew him as the painter who made private drawing rooms feel too small for the end of the world John Martin,...

The mast tilts. Disciples claw at ropes while Christ sits in a pocket of light. Rembrandt's Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1633) is his only seascape - and since 1990 it has been a masterpiece you mostly meet as absence: stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and still missing. Quick facts Artist: Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) Date: 1633 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: Stolen (formerly Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston) Notable fact: Rembrandt's only known seascape; taken in the 1990 Gardner heist (largest US art theft) and never recovered Rembrandt, Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee , 1633. Oil on canvas. Stolen in 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. Public domain image of the lost work. Miracle as Weather The Gospel storm (Mark 4) becomes baroque theatre: panic in the dark water, calm in the illuminated Christ. Rembrandt's chiaroscuro - tenebrism with Dutch muscle - makes faith visible as contrast....

Two fingers almost meet. God, wrapped in a whirl of angels and rose-colored cloth, stretches from the right; Adam, lounging on barren earth, lifts a slack hand from the left. In Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam (c. 1512), painted on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the drama is not a handshake completed. It is the millimeter of air that refuses to close. Quick facts Artist: Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) Date: c. 1512 Medium: Fresco Collection: Sistine Chapel, Vatican City Notable fact: Fourth of nine Genesis scenes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling; the gap between the two fingers has become a global emblem of contact and creation Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Creation of Adam , c. 1512. Fresco. Sistine Chapel, Vatican City. A Ceiling Panel That Became an Icon The fresco sits among nine Genesis scenes Michelangelo painted for Pope Julius II. It is the fourth panel in that sequence, and the one that has outrun the rest in popular memory. God appears as an elderly ma...