Charalampos Panagiotopoulos

The Temptations of Jesus. Mixed media. Acrylics and pigments on canvas. 150x150cm.

At this painting, Jesus has the whole universe on his shoulders and the light of the world, like a horse. Look the ends of his arms. I use the horse as a symbol. We used to say in Greece, “We load him like a horse”. That means, we load someone, with a heavy load, mentally or physically. He took that load, or we gave it to him? Or maybe the god.

Under him are the temptations. Symbolized by some creatures. There is a double meaning here. The creatures that lives in the abyss, represent the evil, that has different names and faces. Like Satan, Mephistopheles, Beelzebub, that they gave the temptations to Jesus in the dessert. And the second meaning is that, these creatures represent the churches, that they changed nowadays, what he taught, and they transformed themselves, into piggy banks. The temptation for Jesus is to destroy them and build them again.

In the middle of the painting, and on the right, there is a human, with a deep sea diver costume. He is in the middle and he has the choice to follow the abyss or the light, and I think, life is like this. It is all about choices.