Job

Otto Gutfreund found inspiration in the sixteenth-century Italian Renaissance master Michelangelo. In this work, Gutfreund most likely borrowed the dramatic angle of the legs from one of Michelangelo’s carvings: the late Rondanini Pietà where Christ’s upright body collapses into his mother’s arms. While Michelangelo inspired Gutfreund’s desire for a new spirituality in modern sculpture, the Old Testament story of Job—who never lost his faith in God even in the face of great physical suffering and personal tragedy—offered Gutfreund the perfect subject. Although Gutfreund wrote in 1910 while studying in Paris, "My model will be nature, my aim Antiquity and the Gothic," he actually kept abreast of new developments in European art. In Job, the vertical stacking of simplified volumes and the hints of faceting of edges reflect the geometric logic of French Cubist painting and sculpture.