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Home/ Artists / Dada / Max Ernst/ The Virgin Spanking the Christ Child before Three Witnesses: Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, and the Painter

The Virgin Spanking the Christ Child before Three Witnesses: Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, and the Painter

Max Ernst

The Virgin Spanking the Christ Child before Three Witnesses: Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, and the Painter

Max Ernst
  • Date: 1926; Paris, France  
  • Style: Surrealism
  • Period: First French period
  • Genre: symbolic painting
  • Media: oil, canvas
  • Location: Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany
  • Dimensions: 196 x 130 cm
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Here, portrayed as an earthy, frustrated woman, the Virgin Mary sharply paddles her young son - the unruly baby Jesus - on his bottom which displays red marks already left by her punishing hand. Watching through the background window and serving as witnesses are Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, and the painter himself; all three seem untroubled by the scene. Ernst successfully upends both his own Catholic faith with its devotion to Christ's mother Mary, while simultaneously debasing much of Western art history with its proliferation of loving scenes between the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Christ child, and also, undercutting the secular, bourgeois sanctity of motherhood. Ernst's painting is simultaneously blasphemous and sharply humorous. As expected, not everyone saw humor in the theme and the work created considerable controversy as an attack on Christianity and contemporary values.

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