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Lot Essay
The future Pope John XXIII was so outraged when he saw Delvaux's crucified skeletons at the 26th Venice Biennale in 1952 that he subsequently forbade the clergy from attending the exhibition. For Delvaux, however, there was nothing sacrilegious about his substitution of skeletons for figures from the Passion. To him, the skeleton was merely 'a very, very, very strong expression' of the human.
'Suddenly I had the idea of making scenes of the Passion using skeletons, because I thought that in a way I could put the maximum of dramatic expression into the skeletons. I could not paint more religious scenes with living figures. That would have been stupid. It
would have been meaningless. It had been done a thousand times, admirably, in previous centuries. What I could do was to replace the living figure by skeletons, because then I could suddenly give my skeletons something different, dramatic, living' (quoted in exh. cat. Paul Delvaux 1897-1994, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Belgium, Brussels, 1997, p. 26).
Painted the year after this scandal at the Venice Biennale, Casques et squelettes (Helmets and Skeletons) demonstrates that Delvaux was certainly not going to be dissuaded from his chosen path by the protestations of the Roman Catholic clergy. One of three important paintings incorporating skeletons into the composition that Delvaux made in 1953, Casques et squelettes depicts the mourners at the foot of the cross. Reproduced in a similar format as part of the large Crucifixion II of the same year, the painting concentrates on the contrast between the impersonal faceless helmets of the Roman guards and the white skulls of the mourners lamenting their saviours passing. As in so many of Delvaux's works, the composition is an elegant play of light and dark elements with the skeletons replacing his nudes as the element of light, of the human and, as Delvaux was at pains to point out, fundamentally of life.
'Suddenly I had the idea of making scenes of the Passion using skeletons, because I thought that in a way I could put the maximum of dramatic expression into the skeletons. I could not paint more religious scenes with living figures. That would have been stupid. It
would have been meaningless. It had been done a thousand times, admirably, in previous centuries. What I could do was to replace the living figure by skeletons, because then I could suddenly give my skeletons something different, dramatic, living' (quoted in exh. cat. Paul Delvaux 1897-1994, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Belgium, Brussels, 1997, p. 26).
Painted the year after this scandal at the Venice Biennale, Casques et squelettes (Helmets and Skeletons) demonstrates that Delvaux was certainly not going to be dissuaded from his chosen path by the protestations of the Roman Catholic clergy. One of three important paintings incorporating skeletons into the composition that Delvaux made in 1953, Casques et squelettes depicts the mourners at the foot of the cross. Reproduced in a similar format as part of the large Crucifixion II of the same year, the painting concentrates on the contrast between the impersonal faceless helmets of the Roman guards and the white skulls of the mourners lamenting their saviours passing. As in so many of Delvaux's works, the composition is an elegant play of light and dark elements with the skeletons replacing his nudes as the element of light, of the human and, as Delvaux was at pains to point out, fundamentally of life.