THE RESURRECTION: in my young mind at Sunday School I always imagined a cave with a big round stone being rolled away, perhaps the result of making Easter gardens with moss and pebbles. It’s interesting therefore to consider how the subject has been tackled in Art History: so often not as a cave but as a lidded sepulchre. In the Treasury of @chicathedral there is a painting of the resurrection by the German émigré Hans Feibusch who came to Britain in the 1930s. It has been in situ since I curated an exhibition of Modern Religious art in 2004, and I’m so pleased it’s become a permanent fixture on loan from the @pallanthousegallery collection. But, at first, the muscular resurgent Christ with raised arms seems unlike so many more typical depictions of Jesus at his crucifixion and before. I find myself looking to other representations of Resurrection from the Renaissance to contemplate what Feibusch was trying to achieve and reference: most notably the presence of Piero della Francesca’s muscular Christ (who has always reminded me of the footballer @ericcantona ). In contrast, Glyn Philpot’s 1930 Resurgam presents a willowy, passive Christ. Philpot was President of the Guild of Catholic Artists, but this to me seems to be all the tension between his Catholicism and homosexuality made manifest in an artwork. So here, are a few examples garnered from an evening spent searching for examples from Renaissance Italian art: 3) Piero della Francesca 4) Raphael 5) Andrea Mantegna 6) Botticelli 7) Giovanni Bellini 8) Titian 9) Marco Basaiti 10) Pieto Perugino. Feibusch and Philpot were such vastly different artists, Feibusch so high-octane, Philpot so restrained, yet camp, but both were preoccupied with the work of the Old Masters, seeking to bring something of their example to works that needed to speak to a modern audience. The question of originality is so complex when one approaches it like this. #resurrection #hansfeibusch #glynphilpot #renaissance #christ #easter #jesus #pierodellafrancesca #andreamantegna #titian #botticelli #pietroperugino #raphael #renaissanceart (at Pallant House Gallery) https://www.instagram.com/p/B-5MMKBlxaC/?igshid=1oys16htfilb6