The child Jesus among the doctors.

— Mrs. Dozon, our colleague of the Society, received at home, on April 9, 1862, the following spontaneous communication:

“The child Jesus found by his parents preaching in the Temple, among the doctors. (Saint Luke, Nativity). Such is the subject of a picture inspired in one of our greatest artists. This work of man reveals more than genius: there one sees shining that light which God gives to souls to enlighten them and to lead them to the celestial regions. Yes, religion enlightened the artist. Was that radiance visible? Did the workman see the ray departing from heaven and descending to him? Would he have seen the head of the Child-God become divinized beneath his brushes? Would he have knelt before this work of divine inspiration, and exclaimed, like old Saint Simeon: ‘Lord, you will let your servant die in peace, according to your word, because my eyes have seen the Savior whom you now give us and whom you destine to be set before the eyes of all peoples.’ “Yes, the artist may call himself the servant of the Lord, for he has just executed an order of His supreme will. God willed that, in the time when scepticism reigns, the multitude should halt before this figure of the Savior! More than one heart will depart bearing a remembrance that will lead it to the foot of the cross, where this divine child gave his life for Humanity, for you, indifferent multitude!

“Contemplating the picture of Ingres, the gaze withdraws with great difficulty in order to turn toward this figure of Jesus, in which there is a mixture of divinity, of childhood and also something of the flower; those draperies, that tunic of light, youthful, delicate colors, recalling the soft coloring that sways on the perfumed stems. Everything deserves to be admired in the masterpiece of Ingres. But there the soul prefers to contemplate the two adorable types of Jesus and of his divine Mother. Once again we feel the need to salute her with her angelic words: ‘I salute you, Mary, full of grace.’ But if we only dare to lift the artistic gaze toward this noble divinized figure, tabernacle of a God, spouse of a man, virgin through purity, woman predestined to the joys of paradise and to the agonies of Earth, Ingres understood all this, and we shall not pass before the Mother of Jesus without saying to her: ‘Mary, most sweet virgin, in the name of your son, pray for us!’ You will appreciate it one day; I saw the first brushstrokes upon that blessed canvas. I saw appear, one by one, the figures, the poses of the doctors; I saw the protecting angel of Ingres, inspiring him, make the parchments fall from the hands of one of those doctors. My God, there one finds a whole revelation! That voice of a child will also destroy, one by one, the laws that are not his. “I do not wish here to make art as a former artist. I am a Spirit; for me only religious art touches me. Thus, I saw in those graceful ornaments of grapevine the allegory of the vineyard of God, where all men must sate themselves, saying to myself, with profound joy, that Ingres had just brought one of his beautiful clusters to ripeness. Yes, master! your Jesus will speak, too, before the doctors who deny his law, before those who combat it. But when they find themselves alone with the remembrance of the divine Child, oh! more than one will tear up the rolls of parchment upon which the hand of Jesus will write: Error.

“See, then, how all the workers appoint a meeting! Some come voluntarily and by paths already known; others, led by the hand of God, who goes to seek them in their places and shows them where they must go. Others still, without knowing where they are, arrive drawn by the charm that makes them sow flowers of life, to raise the altar upon which the child Jesus still comes today for many, although, beneath sapphire-blue draperies or beneath the tunic of the crucified one, he is always the same and only God.”

David, painter. n

— Neither Mrs. Dozon nor her husband had heard of this picture. Having personally inquired of several artists, none of them knew it. We then began to think of a mystification. The best means of resolving the doubt was to go directly to the artist, to learn whether he had treated the subject. This is what Mr. Dozon did. Entering the studio, he saw the picture, finished only a few days before and, consequently, unknown to the public. This spontaneous revelation becomes still more remarkable when one considers that the description given by the Spirit is of perfect exactitude. Everything is there: the branch of the vine, parchments fallen on the floor, etc. At the moment the picture is exhibited in a hall on the Boulevard des Italiens, where we went to see it and, like everyone, to admire it, for it represents, undoubtedly, one of the most sublime pages of modern painting. From the point of view of execution, it is worthy of the great artist who, it seems to us, has done nothing superior, despite his eighty-three years. But what makes of it an uncommon masterpiece is the sentiment that dominates there, the expression, the thought that springs from all those figures, upon which it is possible to read surprise, stupefaction, emotion, doubt, the need to deny, the irritation at seeing oneself confounded by a child. All this is so true, so natural, that we began to put words in each mouth. As for the child, he is of an ideal that leaves far behind all that has ever been done on the same subject. He is not an orator who speaks to his listeners; he does not even look at them: in him we divine the organ of a celestial voice. Without doubt there is genius in all this conception, but the inspiration is incontestable. Mr. Ingres himself said that he had not composed this picture under ordinary conditions; he said he had begun it with the architecture, which is not his custom; next came the personages, who, so to speak, placed themselves of their own accord beneath his brush, without premeditation on his part. We have reasons to think that this work is connected to things whose key we shall have later, but about which we must still keep silence, as about many others.

The above fact having been related at the Society, the Spirit of Lamennais spontaneously dictated, on that occasion, the communication that follows.

ON THE PICTURE OF MR. INGRES.

(Spiritist Society of Paris, May 2, 1862. – Medium: Mr. A.

Didier.)

Lately I spoke to you of the child Jesus among the doctors and emphasized to you his divine illumination in the midst of the learned shadows of the Jewish priests. We have one more example that spirituality and the movements of the soul constitute the most brilliant phase of art. Without knowing the Spiritist Society, one can be a great spiritualist artist; in his new work, Ingres shows us not only the divine study of the artist, but also his purest and most ideal inspiration; not that false ideality which deceives so many people and which is a hypocrisy of art without originality, but the ideality drawn from simple, true nature and, consequently, beautiful in every sense of the term. We, Spirits, applaud spiritualist works, just as we censure the glorification of material sentiments and those of bad taste. It is a virtue to feel moral beauty and physical beauty to that degree; it is the sure mark of harmonious sentiments, in the heart and in the soul; and, when the sentiment of the beautiful develops to that point, it is rare that the moral sentiment is not so as well. It is a great example, that of this old man of eighty years who, in the bosom of a corrupted society, represents the triumph of spiritualism, with the ever-young and ever-pure genius of faith. Lamennais. n [1]

[v. Jacques-Louis David.]

[2] [v.

Lamennais.]