Michel Ciry has been described as an artist of solitude, whose figures seem to be lone actors on a stage empty of all but essential props. This final figure in my quartet of French sacred artists certainly stands alone among his contemporaries in devoting most of his work to religious themes. He also chose to live in self-imposed exile from the Paris art scene for over fifty years on the seacoast of Normandy, making no secret of the fact he would rather have been born in the 17th century than in an age of decline “when the lie is sacred.” The Christ we encounter in Ciry's rich body of sacred art is not the haloed, heavenly-minded Savior typical of much Western religious imagery but a vulnerable, sunken-cheeked figure with three day’s growth of beard and unspeakably sad eyes. Cut this Jesus and you know he bleeds like the rest of us. The Passion of Christ looms large in the narrative art of Ciry, the subject of 25 pieces in my collection. A sampling is now on view in the gallery of the new Michel Ciry biosketch page in the Sacred Artists section. (John Kohan)