The Raising of Lazarus

Van Gogh painted this in the spring of 1890, in the asylum at Saint-Remy where he had gone after his breakdowns. Cut off from live models, he worked from a small black-and-white etching by Rembrandt and reinvented it in his own colours. He removed Christ from the scene entirely and set a blazing yellow sun where the miracle-worker should be. Lazarus, rising from the tomb, has van Gogh's own red hair and beard, the painter casting himself as the man called back from the dead just as he prepared to leave the asylum. He made it in May. He was dead by the end of July.