Man of Sorrows

By 1891 James Ensor was a difficult, embittered figure, mostly stuck in his home town of Ostend, feeling ignored and mocked by the Belgian art world. He kept painting Christ as a stand-in for himself, the misunderstood outsider. For this small, savage head he borrowed the old Flemish Man of Sorrows type from a 15th-century painter, Albert Bouts, then fused it with the grimace of a Japanese Noh theatre demon mask. The face bleeds and stares, more frightening than pitiable. He even worked the surface with something sharp, scratching the beard and hair straight into the wet paint, perhaps with a needle.