Weekend Assignment #50: Tell us about an artwork -- painting, sculpture or other visual work -- which had a significant impact on you. Note this doesn't have to be your "favorite" piece of art, or the one you like the most (although it can be, if you want): I'm looking for the work that made you think, or affected you in an unexpected way.
A painting that left quite an impression on me was one I saw many years ago at the De Young Museum in San Francisco. My parents were with me and we were there to see either the King Tut Exhibition or a Tiffany Glass display; I can’t remember which one. After the exhibition, we strolled around and looked at lots of paintings.
One, in particular, stopped me dead in my tracks. It was a huge painting of a man being tortured; disemboweled, in fact. It was so large that it seemed to take up the entire wall at the end of a room. The title of the painting was "The Martyrdom of St. Erasmus" by Nicolas Poussin.
I was horribly fascinated and asked my Dad what this painting was all about. He told me the man was being tortured because he refused to worship a statue of Hercules, a pagan idol, and renounce his faith. Well now, this was amazing to me that an individual would possess a faith so strong that not even hideous torture such as what was depicted on this giant canvass could sway him. Even though I was brought up through the usual steps of becoming a confirmed church member, I have never possessed anything close to a faith in religion that this man surely had. I still don’t and simply cannot imagine such a thing.
1 comment:
The lives of the martyrs totally fasinated me as a child. Today I cringe when I think of their pain and suffering.
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