The Appearance of Christ Before the People

Alexander Ivanov started this canvas in 1837 as a young Russian painter in Rome, and he did not finish it for 20 years. It grew to more than five metres tall, and for two decades it was the whole of his life, funded by grants that kept nearly running out. The subject is the moment before Christ steps into public view. John the Baptist stands by the Jordan and points him out to a crowd, and Ivanov painted that crowd as a study of every human reaction at once, from hope to doubt to cold indifference. He made hundreds of preparatory studies of heads and bodies and landscape, working and reworking. He finally brought it back to Russia in 1858. He died of cholera within weeks of its unveiling, just as Alexander II bought it for the nation.