Two Monks in a Ravine

This is one of the larger Bernards in the museum, 70 by 100 centimetres, two robed monks on a path above a ravine, signed in the lower left corner. He painted it in 1904, the year he took a house at Tonnerre in Burgundy and began spending his winters in Naples. Behind that lay ten years in Egypt and earlier journeys through Constantinople and Palestine, made partly to look for the beginnings of Christianity, and religious subjects held a large share of his attention from then on. Italy supplied the other half of what he wanted. He was arguing by that time that Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian were the standard painting should be measured against, and wintering in Naples put those pictures within reach.