Religious paintings by Lovis Corinth deal almost exclusively with the Passion of Christ. Studies on this theme have been so far mainly interested in their stylistic characteristics. However, since Corinth regarded the European art of the past as essential to his own art and was well aware of the iconographical traditon through his education in academies, it is necessary to attempt to understand his Christ images on the basis of their iconographical features. This paper is thus concerned with the modern reception of a traditional theme which could be observed in 7 Christ images executed by Corinth in his first and second artistic stages.
An analysis of these art works leads to a conclusion that their themes are all related to physical violence, emotional sufferings and psychological reactions. This might mean that Corinth was interested in universal human nature contained in biblical stories. Hence it could be said that Corinth"s religious paintings dealt with the biblical theme on human level and laid a stress on psychological aspects. These characteristics in fact seem to have been general in religious art of the 19th century. The German protestant art of this era namely tended to depict the figure of Christ in the form of an individual human being rather than to focus on his divine nature as a result of new critical approaches in theology. This profanization also included the view of emotional experiences and feelings as essential to Christian faith, as a result of which the figure of Christ tended to show subjectivity. Hence Corinth seems to have created his own Christ images in radical naturalism within the context of the general trend of his time.
One of the issues concerning Corinth’s religious images is his religiousness which was supposed to be expressed in his works. Most of the scholars had doubts about this matter, due to radical brutality and disrespect dominant in his pictures of Christ. However Corinth’s habits such as always keeping the Luther Bible at hand in his daily life and creating activities as well as his interest in depicting the figure of Luther both in prints and drawings seem to prove that he was a faithful Lutheran, though not a regular church goer. In particular, the theme of the Passion of Christ analysed in this study is connected to the basic doctrine of the Lutheran protestantism, namely justification by faith alone. If because of his formal excessiveness Corinth was not considered to be a Lutheran artist by protestant art critics of the time, it is precisely this artistic quality that distinguishes him from other religious artists of his time and constitutes a part of his contribution to German art of the turn of the century.