Chagall and Rouault ...

... The Spiritual in Art. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... Rouault knows how to give his clowns and poets and singers a New Testament weight. Even his greatest print cycle, Miserere, which includes extraordinary tragic images of Christ, is not so much a statement of religious orthodoxy as of personal faith. Many of the figures in Miserere have no particular theological significance. They are included because they resonate idiosyncratically with the artist, who believes that the suffering or the confusion of this particular man or woman has some relation to the life of Christ.

This is an outstanding article.