Pentecost, 1732 (oil on canvas), Restout, Jean II (1692–1768) - Art Guide May 2026

Pentecost, 1732 (oil on canvas), Restout, Jean II (1692–1768), Musée du Louvre, Paris/Bridgeman Images Use this Art Guide video in Step 3: Contemplation of Columban Visio Divina - (Download for free here https://tinyurl.com/49nmm2hx) - A resource to help you pray using the images and Art Guide of the 2025 Columban Art Calendar. (Purchase here - https://tinyurl.com/34jyeya5) The major Christian feast of Pentecost is celebrated fifty days after Easter Sunday and one week after the Ascension of the Lord. The meditation welds together these three major events in the liturgical calendar, culminating in the forming and commissioning of the Body of Christ, the Church. At the Ascension, Christ consoles and comforts his disciples by promising He will always abide in our midst. By sending the Holy Spirit, all will be strengthened and empowered in a shared Christian mission of evangelisation. Pentecost commemorates the moment the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles and other followers of Jesus: ‘When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them’ (Acts 2:2–4). The painter sets the viewer below the picture plane so that we gaze upward to the reactions of astonishment and perhaps fear. The ‘violent wind’ and ‘tongues of fire’ are visualised as tangible forces of other-worldly power and intervention. The room is shown to be charged with the Spirit of God and renders each as a transformed being. At the centre of the composition stands Mary, the Mother of God, singled out as the one who remains poised and upright, solid and strong. She represents the pillar of the Church on Earth—Ecclesia.