Eternal Symbols

This past week I studied varous religious paintings in the Museum of Art at Brigham Young University. The details and the symbols used in these paintings blew me away when the educator from the museum taught my class about some of them. I've seen these paintings many times before, but every time I see them I get some new meaning from them. It's easy to miss significant details in paintings (at least for me) and when those details are overlooked, you miss part of the message the artist was trying to portray. One of my favorite paintings I studied (which I actually only really studied on a previous visit to the museum) is the one above. The main details I got right away: the chairs (one standing upright the other tipped over) and the red and white cloths. It represents Christ's atonement and our final judgement. Christ is represented by the upright chair and the white cloth because he is pure. We are the other chair and the red cloth. But as said in Isaiah 53, "Though your sins be like scarlet they shall be as white as snow." Through Christ our cloth can become white--we can become purified when we submit ourselves to His will. I needed some prompting for some other details though. At first I didn't even notice the faint circle encompassing the whole scene. The circle can represent many things, from eternity to inclusion. Simply put: Christ's atonement is for everyone and is eternal. One final detail I will talk about is the dark rectangle behind the chairs. At first glance it appeared to be just that to me, but after looking a little closer it looked like a tunnel which you had to pass by the chair to enter. This suggests that our final judgment once this life is over is not the end. We can live forever through Christ--for eternity. I love this painting and I'm sure there are so many things I can still glean from its symbols.