Explore the vast range of titles available.

[...]rather than a hindrance to van Gogh's artistic creativity, the Imitatio Christi tradition was a profound influence on some of van Gogh's most significant works, such as The Pietà and Crows over the Wheatfield, which we shall examine later. Let us ask of Him... that He enable us to fulfil a Christian's life; that He teach us to deny ourselves, to take our cross everyday and follow after Him; to be gentle, long-suffering and lowly of heart.16 Vincent took from The Imitation of Christ and The Pilgrim's Progress the notion that the earthly life is one of trial and ordeal, a journey through the perils and pitfalls of the City of Destruction to the ultimate glorious reunion with the Lord in the Heavenly Jerusalem. Because van Gogh ' s 'piety of experience' is so clearly reflected in these two devotional works, they will inform our discussion of his religious experience during the years from 1 875 to 1879. The Puritans were 'separated brethren' and the individual Puritan was a man marked off from his fellows by his resolution to treat this world as no abiding city. [...]Christian's awareness of his state of depravity and need for grace alienates him at once from his family and the community; secular society without grace has become a City of Destruction.28 The way, to be sure, is an ordeal and a trial of faith, with danger, sorrow, and despair encroaching on all sides. [...]asceticism may have its negative aspects in extreme self-abnegation, but it has its positive aspects as well in attempting to model the life of Christ in an effort to achieve the most intimate communion with the One Infinite God. [...]van Gogh's asceticism is not an aberration to the religious person.

Between May 1875 and December 1879, Vincent van Gogh's life was marked by a devout evangelical piety, distinctly different from what had gone before. Although raised in a religious family, his father a Dutch Reformed minister in the Groningen tradition, van Gogh barely mentions religion in his early letters. His religious fervor deepened considerably, however, sometime during 1875, while he was living in Paris. Van Gogh's letters dating from May 1875 are increasingly filled with biblical quotations and religious reflections. His sister-in-law, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, in describing van Gogh's character during this period wrote, “that was Vincent's aim—to humble himself, to forget himself, ‘mourir à soi-meme,’ (to sacrifice every personal desire), that was the ideal he tried to reach as long as he sought his refuge in religion, and he never did a thing by halves.”

Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh-- whose brilliant coloring and radically individualized symbolism changed the way we view art-- each painted portraits of themselves as Christ. Although Gauguin the Frenchman (1848-1903) and Van Gogh the Dutchman (1853-1890) were contemporaries and even lived together for a time, their self-portraits as Christ have vastly different meanings.

Art historians have ignored Vincent van Gogh's faith, but his art was actually the mode he used to express his piety. One of his paintings, \"At Eternity's Gate,\" is used to illustrate this important point.