A strangely captivating oil painting, Paul Gauguin’s Christ on the Mount of Olives is a self-portrait that places the artist in place of Christ as he embarks on a journey into the unknown. Creating both a sense of depth and hierarchy, two figures can be seen trailing behind the character in the foreground.

In addition to the size and spacing of the figures in the work creating an implied hierarchy, Gauguin purposely depicts the figures in the background without faces in order to ensure that they do not draw attention away from the central figure. Gauguin carefully chooses each brush stroke in order to create a hazy texture, causing the work to almost appear as a vision. Despite using warm colors in order to build the central figure, the background of the work, an outdoor terrain, is composed almost entirely of cool colors. This juxtaposition of colors in this work cause for a perfectly balanced piece.