3-028-814 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"The Remorse of Judas," by E. Armitage, A.R.A., 1870. Engraving of a painting in the South Kensington Museum. '"Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood"...very few English painters could have treated the difficult subject with the intense dramatic force, and extraordinary power of modelling, chiaroscuro, and colour which Mr. Armitage has displayed. The largeness of style characterising these figures of heroic dimensions...could hardly have been attained by any painter whose hand and eye had not been trained to command large surfaces by the practice of mural decorations. Many stories are told of the difficulty which the religious masters of the great schools experienced in finding models sufficiently villanous of aspect wherefrom to produce an ideal of the greatest of sinners...The various required types of bigotry, pride, arrogance, and inhumanity are no less finely portrayed in the figures impersonating the "chief priests and elders." The...vulture - bird of blood and ill-omen - helps to enhance the dread suggestiveness of the composition'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.