Le Christ et la femme adultère

Polenov worked toward this enormous canvas for the better part of fifteen years. He wanted the Gospel scene to look like a real place, so in the early 1880s he travelled through the Middle East, studying the light and stone of the Holy Land before painting Jerusalem as it might actually have looked. The moment is from the Gospel of John: a woman accused of adultery is dragged before Christ, who invites whoever is without sin to throw the first stone. Polenov wanted to name the picture after that line, but the church censor refused it, and the work went into the exhibition of 1887 under the plainer title we still use. Tsar Alexander III bought it there, and it hung in the Winter Palace before entering the Russian Museum.