Synagogue

Sargent, John Singer, 1856-1925 · [ca. 1916–1919]

The Synagogue panel brought Sargent's great commission a new controversy, with many from within and beyond the Jewish community criticizing its representation of the figure as defamatory - as though representative of a religion at a collapsing point. One patron expressed dissent by splashing a vile of ink across the work in 1924. Amidst criticism, Sargent insisted that the work drew not from any ill opinion but rather from medieval imagery, depicting Synagogue as a blindfolded figure clasping her staff as the ruins of her religious space fell among her. Sargent based the figure for this work on Michelangelo's Cumaean Sibyl. It is thought that this piece - alongside Church to the far right - is embedded with imagery of World War I, in which Sargent lost his dear niece, Rose-Marie Ormond, in a bombing of a Parisian church.