Journal /  Come Follow Me

Masters of the Life of Christ: Walk the Savior’s Life Through 143 Great Paintings

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Carl Bloch’s Christus Consolator, Jesus with arms open among people who are grieving and sick

Most of us know a handful of paintings of the Savior from meetinghouse hallways and lesson manuals. We see them one at a time, usually out of order and without the story behind them. Masters of the Life of Christ brings them together in one place and hangs them the way you would walk through His life: from the Annunciation to the Ascension.

It's free, and it works on a phone or a big screen.

The Gallery Walk

The Gallery Walk follows 69 moments from the Gospels, in order. Each moment is a room. 68 rooms are open, hung with 143 works by eight masters, with links to the paintings of three more.

The Gallery Walk entrance, with a ribbon of 69 moments across the top and a list of seven chapters
The ribbon at the top shows all 69 moments. Select one to walk straight to that room.

The rooms are grouped into seven chapters, and each chapter is seen through the eyes of a witness:

Chapter Witness Rooms
1. The Promised Birth Mary 8
2. The Growing Boy Joseph 3
3. The Ministry Begins John the Baptist 8
4. By the Sea of Galilee Peter 19
5. Teacher on the Road Mary of Bethany 11
6. The Last Week John the Beloved 13
7. He Is Risen Mary Magdalene 6

How a room works

Each room shows one painting large, with the other masters' versions of the same moment below it. That's where the gallery gets interesting. In Gethsemane, room 58, “Not My Will, but Thine,” you can see how Bloch, Hofmann, Schwartz, Tissot and Ivanov each imagined the same night.

Carl Bloch’s Gethsemane shown large in the gallery, with zoom controls and numbered details
Select any painting to look closer. You can zoom and pan, open numbered details, and read where the original hangs.

Select any painting to look closer. Each painting page lets you zoom and drag around the canvas, opens numbered details to look for, quotes the verse the artist was painting, and tells you what the painting is made of and where it hangs today.

Meet the masters

Each artist has a wing of their own, with the works in Gospel order and the story of their life.

Artist Lived Country In the gallery
Carl Bloch 1834–1890 Denmark 30 works · 19 rooms
Heinrich Hofmann 1824–1911 Germany 10 works · 9 rooms
Frans Schwartz 1850–1917 Denmark 6 works · 5 rooms
James Tissot 1836–1902 France 75 works · 67 rooms
Alexander Ivanov 1806–1858 Russia 12 works · 12 rooms
Mihály Munkácsy 1844–1900 Hungary 4 works · 2 rooms
Antonio Ciseri 1821–1891 Switzerland and Italy 2 works · 2 rooms
Bernhard Plockhorst 1825–1907 Germany 4 works · 3 rooms

Arnold Friberg, Harry Anderson and Del Parson are under copyright, so they have honor wings instead. Their wings tell their stories and link to their paintings where the owners share them, rather than showing copies here.

Start with Carl Bloch

The Carl Bloch wing was the first to open. Bloch was born in Copenhagen in 1834 and, as a BYU curator tells it, used to pretend to read his schoolbooks while drawing inside them. After a fire at Frederiksborg Castle in 1859, the brewer J.C. Jacobsen of Carlsberg asked him to paint 23 scenes from the life of Jesus for the King's Oratory, the king's private prayer chamber. Bloch worked on them from 1865 to 1879, in oil on copper, and they still hang there today.

He also painted eight large altarpieces for churches in Denmark and Sweden and made 78 etchings. For more than 40 years, the Church has used his paintings, mostly the Frederiksborg series, in meetinghouses and printed media. The wing tells that story with its sources.

Ways to use it

  • In December: walk the first two chapters, The Promised Birth and The Growing Boy, one room a night.
  • With Come, Follow Me 2027: find the week's moment and put the room on the TV while you read.
  • Before Easter: walk The Last Week and He Is Risen in order.
  • On your own: pick one moment and compare every artist's version side by side. What did each one notice?

Questions

Is the gallery free?

Yes. There's nothing to buy and no account to make.

Can I use these paintings in a lesson?

The eight older masters died more than a century ago, and their paintings are in the public domain. Each painting page names the museum that owns the original. Friberg, Anderson and Parson are under copyright, so follow the owner's link for those.

Is this an official Church resource?

No. It's an independent project by Weak Things.

Begin the Gallery Walk →

The games are free because the shirts aren't. Shop shirts. Love God.

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