The resurrection of Jairus' daughter

Albert von Keller's The Resurrection of Jairus' Daughter (1886) belongs to the Munich painter's extended series of miracle and healing subjects — biblical stories in which the boundary between life and death is crossed. The daughter of Jairus, the synagogue ruler, who was raised from death by Jesus (Mark 5:21-43) was a subject that allowed Von Keller to combine religious narrative with his documentary interest in apparent death and return to life. His medically informed eye and spiritualist interests gave this subject particular personal resonance.

Von Keller renders the resurrection miracle with the naturalist-spiritualist hybrid approach that characterizes his religious works: the scene is depicted with contemporary domestic plausibility — the bedroom, the grieving family — rather than the supernatural apparatus of traditional religious art. The miraculous is made ordinary, the divine rendered through the specific quality of light and the documentary observation of the reviving child's body. His palette is warm and careful, the emotional intensity conveyed through light and pose rather than theatrical gesture.