Vianney (2020) Original Oil Painting by Nicolas Maureau

A staircase leading nowhere but toward his own body: Vianney, from the Mystiques series, gives a free interpretation of the Curé of Ars, a priest once famous for sermons that drew crowds from across the region, shown here climbing alone instead.

He holds a discipline, a small knotted flogger once recommended to keep the body from sin, mortification treated not as spectacle but as something private, almost domestic. The series strips its saints of the pathos usually built into their iconography, and Vianney is no exception, no radiant faithful, no pulpit, just a man and an object whose violence stays mostly implied.

What's left is humanity caught in intimacy rather than sanctity on display, a saint reduced to the ordinary discipline of a body trying to stay good.

Materials used:

oil painting

Details:

• Oil painting on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 97 x 130 x 2cm / 97 x 130cm (actual image size)
• Ready to hang
• Signed on the back
• Style: Photorealistic
• Subject: People and portraits