Christus Consolator, 1851, Ary Scheffer, Dutch, 1795-1858, 25 5/8 x 34 1/2 in. (65.09 x 87.63 cm) (sight)36 1/4 x 46 in. (92.08 x 116.84 cm) (outer frame), Oil on canvas, Netherlands, 19th century, Ary Scheffer was a renowned French painter active during the first half of the nineteenth century. Christus Consolator was one of his most celebrated compositions, of which numerous versions exist. The subject was inspired by Luke 4:18: 'I have come to comfort those who are brokenhearted and to announce to the prisoners their deliverance; to liberate those who are crushed by their chains.' The 'brokenhearted' are depicted to the left. A kneeling woman mourns her dead child, while in the background (from left to right) we see an exile with his walking stick, a castaway with a piece of ship's wreckage in his hand, and a suicide with a dagger. Placed near these groups are Torquato Tasso, a sixteenth-century poet imprisoned as a madman, and figures representing the three ages of women. To the ri