The Secret Christian Life of Van Gogh

“Revered Jesus throughout his life.”

Van Gogh never really recovered from being shunned by the church but remained devoted in his love for Christ as an artist of immortality. In a letter to a friend and fellow artist he writes, “Christ alone, of all the philosophers, magicians, etc., has affirmed eternal life as the most important certainty, the infinity of time, the futility of death, the necessity and purpose of serenity and devotion. He lived serenely, as an artist greater than all other artists, scorning marble and clay and paint, working in the living flesh. In other words, this peerless artist, scarcely conceivable with the blunt instrument of our modern, nervous and obtuse brains, made neither statues nor paintings nor books. He maintained in no uncertain terms that he made ... living men, immortals.”