Biblical scene

Adolf Jutz's graphic illustrates the Sermon on the Mount, one of the biblical events from the New Testament, from the Gospel according to St Matthew (verses 5,1-7,28). Jutz depicted Jesus standing on top of a mountain and delivering a sermon to the faithful. The listeners are gazing at him and, at the same time, follow him, walking up the steep slope of the mountain, signifying the hardships of life by divine principles. Jesus instructs the faithful in Christian morality. Jutz divided the composition into two parts. In the left part, corresponding to the attitude of obedience to religious precepts, he placed Jesus and his listeners against the background of a cloudless sky. In the right part, there is a desert land overwhelmed by a cloudy sky. This area corresponds to Jesus' opposite attitude, leading to the depths of hell. According to some accounts, the sermon took place on Mount of Beatitudes, on the northern shore of Lake Gennesaret, near the city of Capernaum. According to another tradition, Jesus preached several times in various places. The composition, made in 1920 using the lithographic technique and being hand-printed on thick vellum paper by Georg Pierre, was created during the work on an art publication by the Association for Ritual Art in Karlsruhe. It was the 28th notebook published in 1921/1922 by the Kunstdruckerei Karlsruhe.Adolf Jutz was born in 1887 in Freiburg im Breisgau and died in 1945 in Tegernsee. He was a disciple of the Grand-Ducal Baden School of Art in Karlsruhe. He studied in Florence and Paris at the Académie Ranson with Paul Sérusier and Maurice Denis. He worked mainly in Munich. He took up war, religion, and landscape subjects, commemorating the nature of Upper Bavaria, Jura, and Allgäu. He participated in the work of the Munich Artists' Association of the 2nd Secession.

Ewa Gwiazdowska