“Christ’s Entry Into Brussels in 1889”

Get comfortable, breathe, clear your mind, and ask God to be with you in this time of prayer. Ask God to speak to you through this image.

Let your eyes pause and focus on the part of the image they’re first drawn to. Look at just that part of the image for a minute or two.

Now look at the whole image.

• Is there a word that comes to mind as you look at it

• What thoughts or questions does this image raise?

• What emotions do you feel?

• Does a name for God come to mind? A scripture?

• What title would you give this piece?

Pray through the words, images, emotions, questions, and thoughts that came up for you. Rest in God’s presence, trusting that God is with you even if you don’t “feel” it

As you step out of prayer and into your week,

continue to watch for God. Notice where Jesus is at work in the world, “hidden in plain sight.”

For more information about this piece, see below

• About the artist

  James Sidney Edouard, Baron Ensor was a Belgian painter and printmaker, an important influence on expressionism and surrealism who lived in Ostend for most of his life.

• About This Piece

  James Ensor took on religion, politics, and art in this scene of Christ entering contemporary Brussels in a Mardi Gras parade. In response to the French pointillist style, Ensor used palette knives, spatulas, and both ends of his brush to put down patches of colors with expressive freedom. He made several preparatory drawings for the painting, including one in the J. Paul Getty Museum's collection.

  Ensor's society is a mob, threatening to trample the viewer--a crude, ugly, chaotic, dehumanized sea of masks, frauds, clowns, and caricatures. Public, historical, and allegorical figures, along with the artist's family and friends, make up the crowd. The haloed Christ at the center of the turbulence is in part a self-portrait: mostly ignored, a precarious, isolated visionary amidst the herdlike masses of modern society. Ensor's Christ functions as a political spokesman for the poor and oppressed--a humble leader of the true religion, in opposition to the atheist social reformer Emile Littré, shown in bishop's garb holding a drum major's baton and leading on the eager, mindless crowd.

  After rejection by Les XX, the artists' association that Ensor had helped to found, the painting was not exhibited publicly until 1929. Ensor displayed Christ's Entry prominently in his home and studio throughout his life. With its aggressive, painterly style and merging of the public with the deeply personal, Christ's Entry was a forerunner of twentieth-century Expressionism.