Description
By Philipp Weber, Germany.
It is difficult to dissect the woman’s intense glare in this portrait, but only because passion and anger can be visual sisters with equal intensity.
She could be a yearner for engagement or held in an animalistic stance of self-protection. Still present is the wound on her collarbone, but she is positioned to fight back this time.
In Christianity, ‘Susanna at the Bath’ tells of a beautiful married Jewish woman in Babylon who was spied upon in her garden. They falsely accused her of adultery with a young man, a crime punishable by death. The model’s constant glare is a lantern of a mysterious light that the calmness of maturity could only dim.
Philipp Weber’s spiritual context finds itself lending an old-world style and mood to an otherwise contemporary and exceptional work of art.
Bless Resistance also reminds us that no socially shared movements existed on behalf of women in biblical days.