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Pilate’s retinue and the face of John watching what was happening.
Every face that, with such agony, such blunders and corrections had
grown up within him with its special character, every face that had
given him such torments and such raptures, and all these faces so
many times transposed for the sake of the harmony of the whole, all
the shades of color and tones that he had attained with such labor—all
of this together seemed to him now, looking at it with their eyes, the
merest vulgarity, something that had been done a thousand times over.
The face dearest to him, the face of Christ, the center of the picture,
which had given him such ecstasy as it unfolded itself to him, was
utterly lost to him when he glanced at the picture with their eyes. He
saw a well-painted (no, not even that—he distinctly saw now a mass of
defects) repetition of those endless Christs of Titian, Raphael, Rubens,
and the same soldiers and Pilate. It was all common, poor, and stale,
and positively badly painted—weak and unequal. They would be
justified in repeating hypocritically civil speeches in the presence of
the painter, and pitying him and laughing at him when they were alone
again.
The silence (though it lasted no more than a minute) became too
intolerable to him. To break it, and to show he was not agitated, he
made an effort and addressed Golenishtchev.
“I think I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you,” he said, looking
uneasily first at Anna, then at Vronsky, in fear of losing any shade of
their expression.
“To be sure! We met at Rossi’s, do you remember, at that soiree
when that Italian lady recited—the new Rachel?” Golenishtchev an-
swered easily, removing his eyes without the slightest regret from the
picture and turning to the artist.
Noticing, however, that Mihailov was expecting a criticism of the
picture, he said:
“Your picture has got on a great deal since I saw it last time; and
what strikes me particularly now, as it did then, is the figure of Pilate.
One so knows the man: a good-natured, capital fellow, but an official
through and through, who does not know what it is he’s doing. But I
fancy...”
All Mihailov’s mobile face beamed at once; his eyes sparkled. He
tried to say something, but he could not speak for excitement, and
pretended to be coughing. Low as was his opinion of Golenishtchev’s
capacity for understanding art, trifling as was the true remark upon the
fidelity of the expression of Pilate as an official, and offensive as might
have seemed the utterance of so unimportant an observation while
nothing was said of more serious points, Mihailov was in an ecstasy of
delight at this observation. He had himself thought about Pilate’s
figure just what Golenishtchev said. The fact that this reflection was
but one of millions of reflections, which as Mihailov knew for certain
would be true, did not diminish for him the significance of
Golenishtchev’s remark. His heart warmed to Golenishtchev for this
remark, and from a state of depression he suddenly passed to ecstasy.
At once the whole of his picture lived before him in all the indescrib-
able complexity of everything living. Mihailov again tried to say that
that was how he understood Pilate, but his lips quivered intractably,
and he could not pronounce the words. Vronsky and Anna too said
something in that subdued voice in which, partly to avoid hurting the
artist’s feelings and partly to avoid saying out loud something silly—so
easily said when talking of art—people usually speak at exhibitions of
pictures. Mihailov fancied that the picture had made an impression on
them too. He went up to them.
“How marvelous Christ’s expression is!” said Anna. Of all she saw