VINCENT VAN GOGH PIETA

Vincent van Gogh Pieta

Vincent van Gogh Pieta

Introduction

What makes Vincent Van Gogh's work, “Pieta” (1889) so unusual is that, unlike the original creativity exhibited in so many of his most famous works of art, the “Pieta” is based on a copy of a work by Eugene Delacroix. Indeed, the work by Van Gogh is often referred to as not simply “Pieta,” but “Pieta (after Delacroix).”

Discussion

The painting as copy

This painting is one of about 30 works of art that were copies of famous paintings he did while at the asylum in Saint Remy de Provence near the end of his life. However, one must understand the role of copying throughout more than 700 years of fine art. This is not an attempt to recreate a painting for illegal purposes. Instead, copying was a learning tool for artists throughout the ages.

In an April 2012 exhibit of just such copies at the Karlsruhe Kunsthalle in Germany, for example, curators make a clear differentiation between forgeries and copies. Artists who made copies include such notables as Albrecht Durer, Pieter Brueghel, Henri Matisse, Edgar Degas, and of course, Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890). As a demonstration of the sharing of artistic viewpoints, Van Gogh painted a copy in watercolor of a sketch made by Bernard of Breton woman. Van Gogh wrote to Bernard of a utopian ideal where artists worked cooperatively, focused on a common idea, to reach heights artistically "beyond the power of the isolated individual." As a means of clarification, he stated that did not mean that several painters would work on the same picture, but they will each create a work that "nonetheless belong together and complement each other." The Breton Women is one of many examples of how Van Gogh and one of his friend's brought their unique temperaments and skills to a single idea.[6]

Van Gogh wrote to Bernard his trade of the Breton Women to Paul Gauguin: "Let me make it perfectly clear that I was looking forward to seeing the sort of things that are in that painting of yours which Gauguin has, those Breton women walking in a meadow so beautifully composed, the colour with such naive distinction."[7] Gauguin made a work, Breton Women at a Pardon which was may have been inspired by Bernard's work of Breton women.[8]

Notes one of the curators, Ariane Mensger, “We understand a 'forgery' to be when a picture is ...