Christ and the Lamb

Description

Having turned to art after a brief stint as a Wall Street commodities trader, Jeff Koons creates beautifully crafted and often controversial sculptures. An elaborate, Rococostyle mirror, Christ and the Lambis also a visual puzzle: its frame shapes the mirror surface into the figure of the infant Jesus playing with a lamb, taken from Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne (1508; Musée du Louvre, Paris). Viewers thus see their own image superimposed on the body of the Christ Child. Koons has said, “Anything that reflects has a kind of spiritual transcendence because it involves the viewer. It acknowledges your presence. Every time you move, the reflection changes; it always acknowledges you.”

Christ and the Lamb

Jeff Koons

1988

Accession Number

229372

Medium

Gilded wood and mirror

Dimensions

200.7 × 139.7 × 17.8 cm (79 × 55 × 7 in.)

Classification

sculpture

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Gift of Edlis Neeson Collection