tissot 3

Halfway through the process of the La Femme à Paris project... 

Tissot began working at the Church of Saint-Sulpice to research the next piece, 'La Femme qui Chant dans l'Église' or 'Musique Sacrée'. 

Accounts of the experience which followed vary slightly, and were sometimes influenced by gossip, or the feelings of the person doing the retelling. But overall, most report that Tissot paused from his work, when a priest began to celebrate mass. Having been raised with the habits and respectfulness of his devout Catholic mother, though not a practicing Catholic himself, Tissot knelt at the beginning of the Eucharistic prayer. 

Then, when the priest raised the host for consecration... 

Tissot felt seized by a vision of two homeless peasants resting within the crumbled ruins of a once great building – possibly the ruins of the French state. Then he noticed that leaning on their shoulder, but unknown to the couple, was a wounded and scarred Jesus. He bore a crown of thorns, and the other signs of his passion, but most importantly was consoling them, by joining them in their sorrow.

Tissot felt so plagued by this vision... 

that he abandoned his Woman of Paris project... 

and discreetly painted this intimate scene in the work 'Inward Voices' (The Ruins).

[bron]