Pictures about good and evil. “Christ and Antichrist”, or How to distinguish good from evil - about the painting by I. Glazunov, candidate of theology. The symbolism of the painting is in the artist’s depiction of good and evil from a modern perspective

The Hungarian artist Tivadar Kostka Csontvary lived and worked in the 19th century; he created more than a hundred works of art. But paradoxically, during his lifetime the master was considered crazy, and the secret of his painting was revealed almost a hundred years after the artist’s death. In 1902, Chontvari painted the painting “The Old Fisherman”.

Painting “The Old Fisherman” by Tivadar Kostka Chontvari, 1902.

In fact, there is nothing special in the picture if you don’t know the secret subtext put into it by the artist. The secret of the painting was revealed quite recently by an employee of the city museum in Pecs, where the painting is now kept. The secret is that the picture contains two images. You can see this if you divide the canvas in half with a mirror. In the reflection of the fisherman on the right side, you will see God in a boat against the backdrop of a calm lake. The reflection on the left side is the devil, against the backdrop of a volcano and stormy sea.

God is the reflection of the fisherman's right side.

the devil is the reflection of the fisherman's left side.

These paintings are known even to those who are far from the world of art, because they are true masterpieces. And each of them hides some secret that cannot be seen with the naked eye.

And it seems that every stroke has already been studied inside and out, nevertheless, scientists are constantly discovering something new in these ancient paintings. Their authors left their descendants with unusual riddles that they managed to solve!

The editors of InPlanet have prepared a list of 12 legendary paintings that have kept secrets for many years and even centuries!

Portrait of the Arnolfini couple / Jan van Eyck (1434)

This portrait was the first in European history to depict a couple. It is an excellent example of the early Renaissance. Historians are still arguing about who is depicted on the canvas and what is happening there. Many are sure that this is a wedding, as indicated by some signs in the picture.

But the most interesting fragment is practically hidden from view - in the reflection of the mirror on the wall you can see the outlines of four people. It is vaguely clear that there is a man and a woman, and the signature is “Jan van Eyck was here.” Art critics believe that the artist depicted himself and his wife.

The Last Supper / Leonardo da Vinci (1495-1498)

This fresco is one of the most famous works of Leonardo da Vinci and also conceals many secrets. The most interesting riddle hidden on the surface - in the images of Jesus and Judas.

The artist painted the remaining images with ease, but these two faces were the most difficult for him. For the face of Jesus, he was looking for the embodiment of goodness, and he was lucky - in the church choir he met a young singer. But the last unwritten stain remained Judas, and da Vinci sat for hours in eateries to select the ideal embodiment of evil. And finally, he was lucky - in a ditch he found a drunkard who could barely stand on his feet. He painted the image of Judas from it, but in the end he was surprised.

This man approached him and said that they had already met. Several years ago he was a singer in a choir and had already posed for Leonardo for this picture. So, one man began to personify good and evil.

Portrait of Lady Lisa del Giocondo / Leonardo da Vinci (1503-1505)

Perhaps the most mysterious painting ever painted is the Mona Lisa. For several centuries now, it has haunted art critics and historians, giving rise to increasingly wild and intriguing ideas for its creation.

Who is this woman with a mysterious smile and no eyebrows? It is traditionally believed that this is the wife of the merchant Francesco Giocondo. But there are several other theories that have a right to exist. For example, that the Mona Lisa is a self-portrait of Leonardo himself. There is also a possibility that this painting was painted by da Vinci for himself, and the real painting was discovered in Aizerloot 100 years ago. This Mona Lisa more closely matches the description of the painting by Leonardo's contemporaries.

And more recently, scientists have suggested that the mysterious smile of the girl on the canvas is due to the fact that she had no teeth. By the way, the x-ray showed that she had eyebrows, but the restorations had significantly damaged them.

Creation of Adam / Michelangelo (1511)

Another Renaissance genius, Michelangelo, created his fresco for the Sistine Chapel, where it remains to this day. The subject for this part of the painting was a scene from Genesis called the creation of Adam. And there are many encrypted symbols on the fresco.

For example, if you look closely at the Creator who creates Adam, you can see... the human brain. Experts believe that in this way the artist drew an analogy of the Creator with the source of intelligence, or simply the brain. This theory is confirmed by the fact that Michelangelo was fond of anatomy and constantly conducted experiments on corpses.

Sistine Madonna / Raphael (1513-1514)

This huge canvas, painted by Raphael, is an example of the highest art of the Renaissance. The painting was commissioned by Pope Julius II and was located in the Piacenza monastery. Some art historians believe that this masterpiece was painted for the funeral of the pope.

Raphael encrypted many signs on the canvas, which historians managed to uncover. One of the obvious secrets of the Sistine Madonna is that in the background the artist depicted the faces of the cloud in the form of the faces of angels. Some historians believe that these are unborn souls.

Shore Scene / Hendrick van Antonissen (1641)

The painting by the famous Dutch marine painter Hendrik van Antonissen has long attracted the attention of art critics. This 17th century painting depicts a seemingly ordinary seascape. But the experts were confused a large number of people gathered on the shore for no apparent reason.

The truth was established with the help of an x-ray study, which established that in reality the painting depicted a whale. But the artist decided that people would be bored looking at the dead whale carcass, so he remade the painting. And with a whale, the canvas looks much more impressive!

The last day of Pompeii / Karl Bryullov (1830-1833)

Russian artist Karl Bryullov was impressed by the history of Pompeii while visiting Vesuvius in 1828. He was a very reserved person by nature, but then Karl was simply overwhelmed by emotions, he stayed in the destroyed city for four days and after a couple of years he began to paint his famous painting.

There is a special secret on the canvas - if you look closely, in the left corner you can see a self-portrait of the artist himself. He also captured his beloved, Countess Yulia Samoilova, with whom he was associated long relationship at least three times, possibly more. She can be seen as a mother holding her daughters to her chest, as a girl with a jug on her head, and as a girl lying on the ground.

Self-Portrait with a Pipe / Vincent van Gogh (1889)

Everyone knows the story of the cut off ear of the extravagant artist Vincent van Gogh. He even painted his self-portrait with a bandaged ear, which caused heated debate among art critics. It is still not known for certain whether he cut off his ear completely or injured it.

For a long time, experts were confused by the fact that in the painting Van Gogh is depicted with a bandage on his right ear, but he injured his left one. But the secret was revealed - the Dutch artist painted self-portraits while looking in the mirror, so there was confusion in the picture due to the mirror image.

Blue Room / Pablo Picasso (1901)

Now the names of these artists are known to everyone, but at the beginning of their careers they had to paint several paintings on one canvas - they could not afford to buy fabric. That is why many masterpieces have a so-called double bottom, for example, Pablo Picasso’s painting “The Blue Room”.

Using X-rays, it was possible to find out that a portrait of a man was drawn under the image. Art historians determine who this person was. According to one version, Picasso painted a self-portrait.

The Old Fisherman / Tivadar Kostka Chontvari (1902)

The Hungarian artist Tivadar Kostka Csontvary created many paintings during his life, but was little known. He suffered from bouts of schizophrenia, but still dreamed of Raphael's fame. Tivadar became famous after his death when the painting “The Old Fisherman” was deciphered, which has now become very popular. It was created in 1902 and is considered one of the artist’s most mysterious works.

At first glance, the canvas depicts an old man, as was believed for many years. Until one day it occurred to someone to look at the mirror image of the two halves of the old man’s face. Then it was revealed main secret this canvas - on it the master depicted God and the Devil, which exist in every person.

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Gower / Gustav Klimt (1907)

This canvas is one of the most famous works Gustav Klimt. In 2006, the Golden Adele was bought for a fabulous sum - $135 million. Beautiful woman, depicted on it, was actually written for the sake of... revenge.

In 1904, the whole of Vienna, including her husband Ferdinand, was talking about the novel between Adele Bloch-Gower and Gustav Klimt. He came up with an unusual revenge and commissioned the artist to paint a portrait of his beloved wife. Ferdinand was very picky, and Klimt made more than 100 sketches. During this time, the artist became bored with his mistress, whose portrayal was so difficult, and their romance ended.

Black Square / Kazimir Malevich (1915)

One of the most famous and controversial Russian paintings is “Black Square” by Kazemir Malevich. Few understand hidden meaning this provocative canvas. But perhaps it’s worth starting with the fact that the square is not square at all and not even black!

X-ray helped determine that under the “Black Square” there is another work by Malevich, on top of which he painted his masterpiece. He prepared for him special composition matte and glossy paints, among which, by the way, there was no black shade. And, despite the fact that the sides of the so-called square are 79.5 cm long, the figure does not have a single right angle.

One way or another, the Mona Lisa remains one of the most mysterious paintings of our time. Perhaps we will never know what this or that artist wanted to tell us, or maybe even all the signs are just a coincidence...

Throughout its history, humanity has wondered what good and evil are and where is the line between them? These concepts can be interpreted in a huge number of variations. Moreover, each person thinks about this issue differently. For one person, a certain act is considered humane and kind, for another, the same act can be cruel and evil.

Taking this factor into account, we can come to the conclusion that the concepts of good and evil are very relative. Sociological surveys were conducted of people who were asked the question: “How do you yourself understand what is good and what is evil?” The lion's share said that goodness is when no one kills, rapes, or steals. When management respects, appreciates and pays well. Children study well and obey their parents, etc.
Well, evil is the opposite of everything listed above. If you ask what good is at the state level, you can hear slightly different answers. People consider stability in the country and the foreign political arena to be good. Respect for human rights and their protection at the state level is also good - this is when our scientists create something better than foreign ones. By the way, this is already turning into evil for the people of the neighboring state. In this example you can see the relativity of the concept of good and evil.
The line between these concepts is different for each person. For example, one thinks that it is good to have a lot of money that he could use to help those in need, and this would be good deeds. However, he can get this money by robbing a “bad” financial company that robs people or a rich person who does not want to share with his neighbors, and therefore is “bad.” And a person will not consider such an act as evil.
But the same bank or rich person will consider this act evil, because, in their opinion, the money belongs to them and they themselves decide how to use it. And they will also be right in their own way in this matter. So, as you can see, the line between good and evil is quite thin and it is different for everyone.
However, there is also a philosophical approach to this issue. It is based partly on religious principles and partly on the awareness of being and meaning itself human life. Here the emphasis is on finding the reason why this or that event occurs in life. For example, why something was stolen from someone, why an earthquake occurred in this particular place, because of which one country attacked another.
All such philosophical conclusions boil down to the fact that, in essence, good is any action aimed at the benefit of a person, society, or the planet. And evil is a tool for regulating harmony, which is needed to correct a person, show him mistakes and direct him to the right path. It also happens in life in the form of punishment for an offense committed earlier. This is designated by the concept of “karma”, and means that for good deeds a person gets good, for bad - bad.
Here, the correct path is considered to be compliance with the “laws of the universe” and human existence. Such logical conclusions are not an authoritative justification for everyone, but they have a right to exist as one of the options for explaining good and evil. The reader is free to choose where the line between good and evil lies for him. However, you should know that no one has the right to consider themselves an exceptional person to whom everything is permitted. A person is obliged to comply with generally accepted laws - human and state. But as for religion and the philosophical understanding of life, here everyone is free to choose for themselves. Pictures of good and evil reflect different perceptions our actions and thoughts...

Crime was one of the favorite topics of newspapermen. But in Dickens’s interpretation, an intonation was heard that was unusual for the sensational prose of those years - moral thoughts about good and evil. Here, for the first time, Dickens, although still rather uncertainly, formulated the idea of ​​“the rationality not of the mind, but of the heart,” which would later develop into Dickens’s entire “Christmas philosophy.”

Formally, “The Pickwick Club” is a sports story, in terms of genre, going back to the “high road” novel, very common during the Enlightenment, which, however, prose writers of the 19th century continued to turn to. This form made it possible to interrupt the narrative at any necessary moment, introduce new themes, and easily introduce new characters.

But not everything in this work is equally true: when Dickens begins to describe rural life, from his pen come pastoral, idyllic pictures. However, from the point of view of the ethical antithesis “good versus evil” carried through the entire novel, these scenes turn out to be especially important. Tugusheva M.P. Charles Dickens: Essay on life and work. M.: Children's literature, 1979. P. 94-100

Dickens's rural paintings are filled with the joy of life, carefreeness and peace of mind. Village life rises to a utopian ideal because it embodies simple-minded happiness. Already in the first novel, this Dickensian ideal is defended in the dispute between Truth, a sensual, emotional perception of life based on imagination and fantasy, and Falsehood - a rational, intellectual approach to reality based on facts and figures (the dispute between Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Blotton) . This philosophical aspect changes our perception of the novel's characters. From a comic character, not devoid of attractiveness, but a narrow-minded English bourgeois, Mr. Pickwick turns into a knight errant, according to Dostoevsky's definition, Don Quixote of the 19th century, and his devoted servant Sam Weller turns into the faithful Sancho Panza. Pickwick is the first in a series of wise Dickensian eccentrics, so dear to him, people not of this world, who affirm, contrary to all rational everyday rules, the triumph of invincible good.

With the image of Pickwick and - most importantly - with the idea of ​​​​good, which he embodies, a powerful romantic element entered Dickens's morally descriptive novel, which determined the artist's work until the period of maturity, that is, until the time of writing his large social canvases and later psychological novels.

Without finishing The Pickwick Club, Dickens began publishing his second novel, Oliver Twist (1837-1838), and without completing it, the novel The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839). Story English literature. / Per. from French Teng I., vol.5. M.: 1904.

"Oliver Twist" is Dickens's first "novel of education" - a genre to which he will return more than once. The structure of all these works is approximately the same: a child, abandoned to the mercy of fate by negligent or difficult parents, persecuted by relatives who illegally want to take advantage of his inheritance, thanks to a strange, romantic in nature coincidence, climbs out of the “abyss of poverty and darkness” : unexpectedly receives a fortune, and with it a corresponding position in society.

The good bourgeoisie - a rich gentleman who happens to be a relative of the boy - helps Oliver Twist solve the mystery, find well-being and stability in life, and in "Nicholas Nickleby" - the Cheeryble brothers, whose very surname (from the English "cheer" - to rejoice) radiates light and good. Contrary to the arguments of logic and artistic plausibility, Oliver (despite the harmful influence of Fagin’s gang of thieves) and Nicholas Nickleby (who grew up in poverty, endured harsh conditions at Squeers’s school) remain as pure and sublime as the very idea of ​​​​good.

Dickens the romantic affirms the good, Dickens the realist begins to look carefully into the psychology of his “dark” heroes. And then from his pen come observations that are surprising in their insight - the dramatic meeting of the angelic Rose Maylie and the fallen Nancy in Oliver Twist, the characters complete knowledge real life(Charlie Bates, The Artful Dodger).

In “Oliver Twist” and “Nicholas Nickleby” evil exists, as it were, in two forms: social evil and ontological evil. The social evil (“Oliver Twist”) is the “poor law,” which sanctioned the opening of workhouses, these “bastilles for the poor.” Metaphysically, evil is Monks with his satanic intention not to kill Oliver, but to corrupt his soul; it is the hatred that possesses the physical and spiritual monster Ralph Nickleby and his henchman Squeers. Evil is manic and cannot be explained by any rational motives, even such as selfishness or the thirst for hoarding. Skuratovskaya L.I., Matveeva I.S. From the history of English children's literature. Dnepropetrovsk: DSU, 1972. P. 165-168

In these works of Dickens, social and ontological evil are still little connected with each other. And the romantic antithesis leads to the fact that social conflicts that really determine the well-being or misfortune of the characters are ultimately removed, giving way to a utopian-romantic resolution of the intrigue. There is a certain mechanicalness in the understanding of good. Good is an idea that will defeat evil, so the bearers of good can be the most different people, regardless of their social status(Mr. Brownlow, the Cheeryble brothers, Rose Meili, the devoted clerk Tim Linkinwater, the unhappy but sympathetic and fair Noggs, the poor artist La Creevy, the wretched Smike).

Some scenes in “The Antiquities Shop” anticipate the late Dickens, who carefully peers into the “secret places” of the psyche. A person (as can be seen from the story about Nell’s grandfather) has two essences - day and night. During the day he is a kind, somewhat stupid old man who devotedly cares for his granddaughter, at night he is a gambler and thief.

“The Antiquities Shop” brings us close to understanding the peculiarities of Dickens’s Christianity. The writer understood Christianity quite broadly - as part of a humanistic program for correcting people through the cultivation of good feelings. Therefore, the death of Nell, a symbol of goodness, is perceived ideologically as the beginning of a new one. spiritual stage: by touching suffering and passing the test of goodness, according to Dickens, you become better. Ivasheva V.V. The works of Dickens. M.: 1954. S. 76-79

Dickens interprets the problem of good and evil somewhat differently in the work “Martin Chuzzlewit.” There are no bright figures like Brownlow - Cheerible, their place was taken by Martin Chuzzlewit Sr. It is he who subjects his relatives to a test (by the way, a rather ambiguous one) in order to then reward the worthy. Happiness ( financial well-being, the warmth of the family hearth) is no longer granted for inherent virtue; it must be earned. The theme of the journey-test that the hero undertakes, important for the mature Dickens, arises. As a result, he changes his self-image, partes with rosy illusions that do not correspond to reality - self-deception - and acquires a different, enlightened attitude towards the world. Such an ethically important test was Martin's harrowing journey across the Mississippi. The goal of the wanderings is symbolically indicated - a place called Eden, once in which Martin does not know how to get out of there as quickly as possible. Gradually, a difference emerges between Martin and his predecessors: Oliver and Nicholas Nickleby. Martin expects too much from life, and therefore to his “ great hopes"The author is not without irony.

The images of the bearers of evil have also undergone evolution. The place of Fagin and Quilp, shrouded in romantic demonism, was now taken by Jonas Chuzzlewit. His image is a deeper and more realistic insight into the nature of evil. In the structure of the novel, Jonas Chuzzlewit is associated with the Company. He is not just a self-interested man, his character is more complex and multifaceted: he is a murderer, who, however, is not alien to remorse.

But the evolution of Dickens the artist is not only that evil from a metaphysical category turns more and more definitely into a socially typical phenomenon: evil now is not only the greed of Jonas brought to the limit, but also the hypocrisy of Pecksniff, and the uncleanliness and greed of Mrs. Gamp. Evil is scattered in the world, it is not a “Gothic” nightmare, it is reality. Good and evil coexist and the only way to defeat evil - to actively fight it, while destroying its sprouts in oneself. This idea is new to Dickens: Nicholas Nickleby fought against evil (Squeers), but it never occurred to him to think about his own imperfection.

This idea, having developed, will find its further embodiment in a cycle of works united common name“Christmas stories”: “A Christmas Tale in Prose”, “Bells”, “The Cricket on the Hearth”, “The Battle of Life”, “Obsessed” - they were published regularly from 1843 to 1848 and, with all their plot and style differences, are perceived as a whole.