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Felicien Rops

Le Calvaire



Felicien Rops - Le Calvaire

'Le Calvaire I', 1882. Color heliogravure. Signed in the plate 'F. Rops'. With red stamp 'GP' (Gustave Pellet). On paper with watermark 'G. Pellet'. Rust in margins and bottom. In frame (taken out of frame). eros. Thanatos. Two elements that are frequently featured in Félicien Rops' oeuvre. The combination of eroticism and death is associated with Catholic iconography in the color engraving 'Le Calvaire' by the artist. The 'Calvary' represented in traditional iconography with Christ on the cross, flanked by Mary and John the Baptist, is replaced here by a macabre erotic scene in a claustrophobic-looking red room in a semicircle of burning candles. A hefty Christ on the Cross tries to suffocate a naked woman with a black ribbon with his goat legs. Instead of I.N.R.I., abbreviation of Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum, the pennant at the top reads 'BELZ' as an abbreviation of Beelzebub or 'prince of the demons'. In the free world of Rops, the man is dominated by the woman, the woman by the Devil. The suite 'Les Sataniques' was created in 1882. This color heliogravure was published on 100 copies by the Paris publisher Gustave Pellet (1859–1919), who also marketed Toulouse-Lautrec's prints. Félicien Rops, the libertine fin-de-siècle painter and engraver in his day went a long way in creating pornographic and satanic images like this one. Was it because of his distaste for the clergy he most likely acquired at the Jesuit school? Satire and subversiveness were his weapon against bourgeois morality, as witnessed by the establishment of his own magazine, Uylenspieghel, as early as 1856. His personal life was equally unconventional. His marriage soon came to an end, after which he maintained a 'menage à trois' in Paris with two sisters who each bore him a child.


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Brought to you by: Westminster
Free collection by seller at : Waasmunster, Belgium.

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Belgium 45€
The Netherlands 60€
France 80€
Europe 100€
Worldwide 150€



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