The Lenten Season is officially upon us, embodied by a spirit of reflection and repentance culminating in the Celebration of Easter on April 16th. As there is an undeniable influence of Christian theology on the history of art, every Sunday of Lent we will explore art with distinctly Christian themes in a methodology known as visual theology. Some posts will contain brief biographical, iconographic and/or formal analysis as well. "And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth...” -GENESIS 4:10-14 Human suffering finds its origins in the Fall. From the moment Adam and Eve tasted of the forbidden fruit, humanity was cursed to a life separated from God filled with pain and turmoil. Cain becomes the embodiment of this curse as the unfavored first child of the fallen Adam and Eve and the murderer of his brother Abel. His path leads east of Eden, towards the desolate land of his desolate future. Cain has forsaken his God; he is the fallen of the fallen. This is the man captured in Fernand Cormon's 1880 large-scale oil painting: Cain. Created for the Paris Salon of 1880, Cain depicts the son of Adam and Eve many years after his divine punishment. It was originally entitled Cain Flying Before Jehovah's Curse and accompanied with a reading from Victor Hugo's poem Conscience: “When with his children clothed in animal skins Disheveled, livid, buffeted by the storms Cain fled from Jehovah, In the fading light, the grim man came To the foot of a mountain in a vast plain…” Cain is shown leading his family through an arid land, perpetually wandering as his curse declares. The sun bears down on their backs and the figural shadows are lengthened "as if the light of truth were pursuing the guilty through the bleak plain.”[i] The figures are depicted as weary travelers carrying only each other or their meager food stores. The painting's muted neutral palette and dusty gray sky create a bleak and desolate landscape; there is no refuge in sight. Painted in the Academic style, Cain is a close study of the human form rendered with anatomical accuracy. Every muscle and hair painted upon the canvas serve to reinforce the sadness and brutal tragedy of their lives. The painting has a largely horizontal orientation as figures stretch across the canvas, "the fear of Jehovah's sentence written on every face." [ii] A destitute man, Cain no longer looks up towards the heavens for refuge, he can only move onwards fleeing God's punishment. Hebrews 11:4 states, "By faith, Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did," [iii] implying it was Cain's pride that caused God's refusal of his sacrifice. Cormon's Cain is stripped of all pride or glory. Even the land he walks upon is cursed. "The earth itself denies him its fruit and instead forces him and his family to a carnivorous life. Cain will never be able to stay...anywhere to plant, let alone harvest, a crop." [iv] There is no hope or respite for Cain and his family in Cormon's painting.
Cormon depicts the subjects of Cain like cretinous humans of a prehistoric era. During the 19th century, our prehistoric ancestors were viewed as nothing but ignorant humans only surviving off of their most primal instincts living lives filled with turmoil. Therefore, such a depiction is highly symbolic of the painter's message. Doing so, Cormon declares that all human suffering is a direct result of our ignorance and this spiritual separation from our creator. Unless we seek to heal this separation through a newly restored relationship with God, we, too, will resemble the perpetually wandering Cain through the desert, living out our lives in despair without Jehovah's direction or Christ's salvation. Additional Images Figure 1 Figure 2 I[i] "Fernand Cormon Cain," Musée d'Orsay, accessed March 8, 2017, http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/search/commentaire_id/cain-8826.html.
[ii] Ibid. [iii] Hebrews 11:4, NIV. [iv] Hunt, Patrick, "Cormon's Cain Flees the Curse," Electrum Magazine, August 27, 2015, Accessed March 7, 2017, http://www.electrummagazine.com/2015/08/cormons-cain-flees-the-curse/.
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