Martha and Mary

Denis painted 'Martha and Mary' in 1896, drawing on the Gospel of Luke's brief episode in which Jesus visits the sisters' home: Martha busies herself with domestic service while Mary sits at Jesus's feet listening to his teaching. When Martha protests, Jesus responds that Mary has chosen the better part. The scene encapsulates a fundamental tension in Christian life between the active and contemplative vocations, and Denis's treatment, now in the Hermitage Museum, is inevitably a meditation on this theme. Denis himself navigated the active life of an exhibiting Parisian painter and theorist with the contemplative desires of a devout Catholic, and the painting has an autobiographical resonance. The two sisters are given equal compositional dignity in Denis's treatment, unlike moralistic readings that simply subordinate Martha to Mary. The 1896 date places the work in his mature early period.

Denis organises the composition around the two sisters' contrasted activities, their poses communicating the active-contemplative tension the narrative encodes. The domestic interior setting provides the spatial framework, treated in his characteristic flat-tending manner. Christ's presence, if depicted, would be the compositional centre around which the sisters are arranged.