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拍品專文
Still Life with Chalice and Host represents a compositional cornerstone in Francis Newton Souza’s oeuvre. Painted in 1953, it is one of the earliest and finest examples in the genre of still life by the artist. At first glance, the highly structured domestic setting appears secular and mundane. However, the religious symbolism encoded within offers the blueprint for many of the artist’s subsequent paintings of the 1950s and 60s.
Souza had a strict Catholic upbringing in Portuguese Goa, and was influenced by the spectacle and ceremony of the Churches there. He recalls, “The Roman Catholic Church had a tremendous influence over me, not its dogmas but its grand architecture and the splendour of its services." (E. Mullins, Souza, London, 1962, p. 42) In his seminal book Words and Lines published in 1955, Souza fondly describes dining at a priest’s home in Goa, writing, ”Sunday evenings, the vicar invited me to dine with him […] A laundered tablecloth was spread only when he [the Vicar] had guests, a luxury he permitted himself with touching simplicity.” (Artist statement, 'Nirvana of a Maggot', F. N. Souza: Words and Lines, London, 1959, pp. 17-18) The warm palette and sun beaming through the curtains suggest just such a scene.
The reds, browns, yellows and greens in this painting may also allude to the stained glass windows of Catholic churches. Even the checkered tablecloth resembles the tunics and vestments of officers of the church or the harlequins often seen in Souza’s portraits from this seminal period. The flattened forms and geometric arrangement of the chalice, host and tablecloth echo throughout the composition, giving this painting an architectonic power. The chalice and host at the center of the composition overtly reference both the Last Supper and the Eucharist, the final meal before Jesus Christ was crucified, when he transubstantiated the wine from his chalice into his own blood and the bread into the flesh of his body. This Biblical miracle informs the holy sacrament of Communion, taken at Roman Catholic mass.
The blackened host on the table may also be suggestive of the stones of Saint Stephen, known as Christianity’s protomartyr, another symbol of death and duality, Heaven and Earth. This form could even be an allusion to the apple of original sin. Souza said “An apple somehow contains several truths. There is Adam’s apple, Newton’s apple. Beckerley’s apple, Cezanne’s apple. Painting contains all these and more accumulated truths. That of form illusion, gravity and tension, sublimation of guilt, colour and geometric structure.” (Artist statement, 'Nirvana of a Maggot', F. N. Souza: Words and Lines, London, 1959, p. 18)
Souza ingeniously sets this still life against a window flanked by partially drawn, meticulously patterned curtains. The sun shining through the window plays a second role as the Holy Spirit. The foliage that adorns the curtains suggests the natural world, an early reference to a trichotomy between man, nature and God that the artist would revisit in several of his paintings over the following decade. Souza reveals through this exceptional work his ability as a painter and draftsman to transcend genres. Through the power of symbolism, Souza uses the genre of still life to express oppositions of good and evil, divine and the human, darkness and light.
Souza had a strict Catholic upbringing in Portuguese Goa, and was influenced by the spectacle and ceremony of the Churches there. He recalls, “The Roman Catholic Church had a tremendous influence over me, not its dogmas but its grand architecture and the splendour of its services." (E. Mullins, Souza, London, 1962, p. 42) In his seminal book Words and Lines published in 1955, Souza fondly describes dining at a priest’s home in Goa, writing, ”Sunday evenings, the vicar invited me to dine with him […] A laundered tablecloth was spread only when he [the Vicar] had guests, a luxury he permitted himself with touching simplicity.” (Artist statement, 'Nirvana of a Maggot', F. N. Souza: Words and Lines, London, 1959, pp. 17-18) The warm palette and sun beaming through the curtains suggest just such a scene.
The reds, browns, yellows and greens in this painting may also allude to the stained glass windows of Catholic churches. Even the checkered tablecloth resembles the tunics and vestments of officers of the church or the harlequins often seen in Souza’s portraits from this seminal period. The flattened forms and geometric arrangement of the chalice, host and tablecloth echo throughout the composition, giving this painting an architectonic power. The chalice and host at the center of the composition overtly reference both the Last Supper and the Eucharist, the final meal before Jesus Christ was crucified, when he transubstantiated the wine from his chalice into his own blood and the bread into the flesh of his body. This Biblical miracle informs the holy sacrament of Communion, taken at Roman Catholic mass.
The blackened host on the table may also be suggestive of the stones of Saint Stephen, known as Christianity’s protomartyr, another symbol of death and duality, Heaven and Earth. This form could even be an allusion to the apple of original sin. Souza said “An apple somehow contains several truths. There is Adam’s apple, Newton’s apple. Beckerley’s apple, Cezanne’s apple. Painting contains all these and more accumulated truths. That of form illusion, gravity and tension, sublimation of guilt, colour and geometric structure.” (Artist statement, 'Nirvana of a Maggot', F. N. Souza: Words and Lines, London, 1959, p. 18)
Souza ingeniously sets this still life against a window flanked by partially drawn, meticulously patterned curtains. The sun shining through the window plays a second role as the Holy Spirit. The foliage that adorns the curtains suggests the natural world, an early reference to a trichotomy between man, nature and God that the artist would revisit in several of his paintings over the following decade. Souza reveals through this exceptional work his ability as a painter and draftsman to transcend genres. Through the power of symbolism, Souza uses the genre of still life to express oppositions of good and evil, divine and the human, darkness and light.