The Appearance of Christ Before the People - Alexander Ivanov

In the painting The Appearance of Christ before the people, also titled as the Apparition of the Messiah , Alexander Ivanov stages the baptism of Christ on the banks of the holy river Jordan as a vast psychologically charged tableau of the people at the dawn of a new spiritual age. The composition centres on John the Baptist, clad in animal skins and standing prominently in the foreground as he gestures towards the slight, solitary figure of Jesus approaching accross a rocky slope. His form is set apart by light and solitude despite its small scale within the enourmous canvas. Around John the Baptist cluster scores of figures - peasants, soldiers, philosophers, hermits and scribes, whose gestures and expressions range from hopeful expectancy to skeptical indifference, embodying Ivanov's vision of a society collectively confronting the arrival of the Messiah. In the foreground, half undressed men wait to be baptised while a rich man and a suffering slave symbolise contrasting responses to Christ's message and a small group of disciples to the left hints at the future mission of spreading the Gospel. Among the crowd Ivanov embeds personal touches, including a figure modeled on the writer Nikoli Gogol and a self portrait of the himself, underscoring the deeply personal and moral dimension of what he considered a twenty year spiritual quest rather than merely a religious painting.