Christ Carrying the Cross - Painting from the Russian school of art in Florence in the Traditional Form

Following on from an earlier posting about the Russian school in Florence, Italy which teaches the academic method as it was practiced in Russia in the 19th century, I would like to draw readers' attention to a painting of Christ carrying the cross by and artist called Ilya Ovcharenko.

I like very much the dark shadowy feel - very baroque and the fact that the faces are generally in shadow which is characteristic of 17th century sacred art (as we saw in Van Dyck recently) but different from the way that portraits are painted. This helps it to avoid the sentimentality that infects so many modern works of sacred art in the naturalistic style. I don't know many artists around today who are able to produce sacred art to this level.

If you want to see a larger reproduction, follow the link here, and you will see a thumbnail, top middle, which you will be able to enlarge using your cursors.