Judas

Head bowed and body enfolded in a voluminous dark blue cloak, the Judas in Anthony Angarola's somber painting is a solitary figure whose hunched form is echoed in the rocky landscape behind him. The beloved apostle who betrayed Christ for thirty pieces of silver, Judas is usually shown with Christ and the other apostles or as having hanged himself in remorse for the betrayal. Angarola chose instead to humanize Judas as a figure of sorrow and regret. By suggesting his capacity for repentance, the image invokes alternate readings of the Christian story in which his act of treachery is the catalyst for humanity's salvation.

Born in Chicago to impoverished Italian immigrants, Angarola was drawn to themes of suffering and compassion in his art. In addition to Judas, he painted scenes from the story of Christ and of St. Francis. More often, he created sympathetic portrayals of society's outcasts and the marginalized immigrant communities found in industrial cities in the American heartland. Widely respected by his contemporaries for his art, Angarola was also revered for what one described as his "gentle, meditative, and compelling spirit."

Angarola was identified with the modernist movement among Chicago artists in the post-World War I era. This painting, with its emphatic sense of structure and patterned brushwork, exemplifies his interest in pure composition applied to the representation of objective reality. While committed to an art for his time, Angarola was also deeply inspired by the paintings of early Italian Renaissance masters, whose influence is evident in the monumental forms and flattened rendering of space in Judas.