The Orange Christ
A devout Catholic, Maurice Denis sought to create what he described as “imperishable icons.” In this small painting, he used flat planes of intense colors to conjure emotion in the viewer. Here, a somber group of women, depicted as amorphous black forms, gather around an orange figure of Christ on the cross. The sky is a reddish-purple streaked with green clouds. Pink angels flank the crucified Christ whose head is haloed in brilliant yellow. In this painting, the daring young artist combined religious fervor with unprecedented visual experimentation.
Colors in this work
Details
- Date
- 1889
- Medium
- oil on board
- Dimensions
- framed: height 0.287 m, width 0.335 m, depth 0.054 m; unframed: height 0.238 m, width 0.189 m
- Origin
- France
- Department
- Modern European Painting and Sculpture
- Holding institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Palette
-
Select a color to find related artworks.
- Image provider
- cleveland-museum-of-art
- License
- CC0-1.0
- Credit
- Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift
Art Genome Taxonomy
11 tags
Subject Matter
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Deities and Holy Figures Both · 99%
The central figure is Christ crucified on a cross; the museum description also identifies the flanking forms as angels and the surrounding figures as women.
Styles and Movements
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Nabis Metadata · 96%
The museum metadata lists “Nabis” among the work’s subjects. This is retained as a catalog-assigned association rather than an independent stylistic determination.
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Figurative Art Visual · 96%
Recognizable human figures are rendered with simplified, flattened silhouettes and limited naturalistic modeling.
Visual Qualities
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Flatness Both · 98%
The composition relies on broad, shallow color areas and compressed spatial relationships; the museum specifically describes the use of flat planes of intense color.
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Bright and Vivid Colors Both · 98%
Orange-yellow, red, green, pink, blue, and dark teal areas create a strongly saturated, high-contrast palette, consistent with the museum’s description of intense colors.
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Dark Colors Visual · 91%
Dark teal, blue, and near-black figures form a substantial foreground mass, producing a pronounced dark tonal counterweight to the central figure and surrounding colors.
Medium and Techniques
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Oil Painting Metadata · 99%
The Cleveland Museum of Art records the medium as oil on board.
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Densely Textured or Haptic Surface Visual · 95%
Short, directional brushstrokes remain clearly visible across the sky, figures, and colored forms, giving the painted surface a tactile, densely worked appearance.
Time Periods
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19th Century Art Metadata · 99%
The work is dated 1889, placing it within nineteenth-century art.
Geographic Regions
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French Art Metadata · 99%
The artist is identified as French and the place of origin is recorded as France.
Cultural and Religious Styles
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Christian Art and Architecture Both · 99%
The image depicts Christ’s Crucifixion, and the museum places the work within the context of Denis’s Catholic religious practice.
Source & rights
Maurice Denis (French, 1870–1943). The Orange Christ. Cleveland Museum of Art.
High-resolution sources
- Original TIFF ↗ 4,462 × 5,535 · Cleveland Museum Of Art · Available