The Resurrection
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| (The Resurrection by Piero della Francesca - found here) |
Here is the risen Christ as the young hero; on his left, the bare trees of winter, on his right, leafed trees, called into fertility by the vitality of his risen presence. His is an implacable face, making no judgements, but in its austere purity perhaps calling us to judge ourselves. Piero softens the grand severity of the image by showing the blood-stained wound in Christ’s side and, in a lighter mood, throwing around the heroic torso of his Christ a robe of the most delicate flowery-pink.
The four sleepers are monumental in their own right, and although Piero’s main concern is to show the profundity of their slumber (which enabled the earth-shaking resurrection to take place unobserved), they also provide a human contrast to the physical glory of Jesus. Their muscular glory is unused, wasted; Christ stands erect, holds his banner, and is tense with restrained motion as he readies himself to rise and leave the tomb.
Each of the figures seems to be in a different degree of slumber: the man on the left could be rubbing his eyes, about to awake; equally, the man on his right is in a position that is not conducive to deep sleep. The man above him is not as deeply sunk in slumber as his hapless companion. Morally then, each of these men is more or less guilty of willful ignorance of the event to which, physically, they are so close.”
~Wendy Beckett

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