Vatican Museums

Realised in 1913, the Procession des pénitents de Furnes belongs to a period of crisis in the life of Ensor, who in the 1910s selected religious subjects to give voice to his anguish for the progressive loss of his sight and for problems of a family nature. In this work the painter turns his hand to an event drawn from medieval tradition: the Procession of the Penitents of Furnes, during which crowds of hooded penitents process barefoot through the Belgian city, carrying a heavy cross. Ensor recreates the atmosphere of chaotic participation, scattering the figures around the cross. To emphasise the value of today’s Via Crucis given to the event, Christ is present in the foreground, flanked by a host of caustic human caricatures, typical of Ensor’s iconographic universe. Here he reworks his celebrated Christ’s Entry into Brussels of 1889 (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Anversa).