This impressive early 18th-century oil painting attributed to French-Flemish artist Matthieu Elias (1658-1741) depicts the Transfiguration of Christ, one of the most extraordinary episodes described in the Gospels.
Christ has taken Peter, James and John onto a mountain when, suddenly, his appearance changes before them. His face shines, and his clothing becomes brilliantly white. Moses and Elijah appear alongside him, and a divine voice declares Christ to be God's son. Elias has approached the moment as an eruption of heaven into the human world.
Christ rises at the centre of the composition, enveloped in brilliant white drapery and surrounded by golden light. His arms extend across the picture, creating a strong horizontal counterpoint to the otherwise relentless upward movement. Beside him are Moses and Elijah, representing the Law and the Prophets, while clouds and a wonderfully unruly population of cherubs fill the space beneath them.
And they really are unruly. Elias has avoided arranging his angels into a neat celestial choir. They tumble, peer, twist and reach around one another, forming a wonderfully animated bridge between Christ above and the apostles below.
On earth, bewilderment reigns. Peter, James and John recoil before the apparition. One throws his arms upwards; another collapses backwards; the third kneels while staring into the light. Their heavy bodies, earth-coloured garments and awkward poses contrast deliberately with the weightless white figure above.
That division is fundamental to the painting. Christ understands what is happening. Nobody else does. Elias therefore gives us two different kinds of movement. Above, Christ is calm, symmetrical and seemingly weightless. Below, everything is reaction: raised hands, twisted bodies, bent knees and faces struggling to comprehend what they are seeing.
The artist was particularly well suited to such a subject. Much of his career was devoted to substantial religious commissions, first in Paris and subsequently in northern France. His pictures characteristically employ theatrical arrangements, expressive gestures, rich colours and long passages of drapery - qualities also identified in surviving accounts of his work.
There's also something distinctly northern about the picture. Elias was born near Cassel, trained at Dunkirk and later returned to the region after working in Paris. Modern scholarship has noted that his mature style retained an older devotional character even during the early 18th century.
Here that quality works beautifully. This is not an elegant religious reverie. It's physical and emphatic. The apostles look genuinely overwhelmed, Moses and Elijah possess enormous bodily presence, and even the angels appear caught up in the excitement. Look more closely, and numerous little faces begin emerging from the clouds. Some are barely more than heads; others have wings or bodies, while several seem simply to have found a cloud from which to watch proceedings.
For the original viewer, the Transfiguration revealed Christ's divine nature to his disciples and connected the old covenant, represented by Moses and Elijah, with the new. Elias makes that theological idea immediately understandable without requiring the viewer to unravel it intellectually: the earthly world is dark, heavy and bewildered; above it, Christ has become light. It's precisely the sort of subject at which Matthieu Elias excelled.
He painted the moment when people look up - and discover that their world has suddenly changed.
Held in a later frame.
Learn more about Matthieu Elias in our directory.
Medium: Oil on canvas laid on board.
Overall size: 36” x 49½” / 91cm x 126cm
Year of creation: c. 1700
Provenance: Private collection, Spain.
Condition: Cleaned. Revarnished. Craquelure throughout. The paint layer is stable. Frame in excellent condition.
Artist’s auction maximum: £9,481 achieved in 2008 for ‘Le Mariage de Cupidon et Psyché (1702)'
Our reference: BRV2198
