In 1856, Russian painter Nikolai Ge submitted an original painting to the Imperial Academy of Arts for exhibition. In March of the following year, the Academy awarded him a gold medal for the painting, granting him the title of Class Artist of the 1st degree and a scholarship for further study abroad. ​That same year, another Russian painter named Dmitry Martynov also submitted a painting to the Academy, for which he received the same honor, as well as the Large Gold medal, the Academy’s highest honor. Two Russian artists, two gold-medal paintings, both occurring in the same year. Yet the most remarkable detail was that both paintings focused on the exact same subject: the strange Biblical story of Saul and the Witch of Endor.

1 Samuel 28 records this abnormal moment. The Mosaic Law forbade people to practice sorcery or to seek out the aid of mediums and necromancers.1 1 Samuel 28 notes early on that King Saul had previously “put the mediums and the necromancers out of the land."2 But Saul was a very desperate man by this point. He had been rejected by the Lord, tormented by a spirit, afflicted by foreign adversaries, and most of all, he had been consumed with jealousy and hatred toward David, pursuing him to the death.

But now, the Philistine units had assembled into one army and marched out against Israel. And when Saul saw their troops, his heart “trembled greatly.”3 This was the man who from the beginning had measured strength off what the eye could see, and this was not the first time he had felt fear at the sight of a large Philistine army. In a similar situation recorded in 1 Samuel 13, he had rejected Samuel’s advice to wait and had instead taken matters into his own hands. But now, Samuel was dead, and the Lord who had once anointed him had gone silent. So Saul turned to desperate measures. He disguised himself and sought out a medium.

The Biblical account of what comes next is fascinating for many reasons. Saul visits the medium and requests the audience of Samuel, and incredibly, the medium brings him back. But when Saul requests the prophet’s counsel, Samuel declares that Saul himself will be in the land of the dead by the next day. The text ends with the medium forcing Saul to eat, and she serves him meat from a fattened calf and unleavened bread.

The two Russian depictions of this moment share many qualities, though they are not without their differences. Both paintings utilize a play of light and shadow to heighten the tension between the divine and the profane, with contrasting illumination on the figures of Samuel and the witch. Both artists portray Samuel in white, the witch in black, and Saul in red. But where Ge’s depiction feels a bit more human, showing a side-profile of Samuel’s face, Martynov’s is more supernatural, revealing a light from the witch’s hand and showing Samuel less like a man and more like a ghost. Ge emphasizes the shock of bringing back an actual man from the dead, whereas Martynov emphasizes the unnatural nature of this act. Both paintings render Saul in shock, yet both neglect a curious detail in the text: the shock of the witch.

Verse 13 tells us that when the woman actually saw Samuel appear, she “cried out with a loud voice.” More precisely, she shrieked. The immediate implication is that she did not expect for this to actually happen, which begs the question, “How did this actually happen?” Samuel’s pronouncement of the Lord’s condemnation of Saul suggests that God was involved in allowing this moment to happen, in order to pronounce one final judgment on Saul, but the text remains silent. The woman’s realization that her mysterious client was actually Saul in disguise suggests that her shock stemmed from fear of punishment for aiding the king of Israel in sorcery. The passage reveals, among many things, the troubling weight of transgressing God’s created order by playing around with supernatural forces. The fact that two Russian artists chose to highlight this strange moment during the same year is intriguing, as is the fact that both received gold medal awards for their paintings.

The Russian art tradition was undergoing a radical change in its depictions of Biblical images, and the 26-year-old Nikolai Ge would become one of the major figures in highlighting a less transcendent and more humanistic approach to religious icons, particularly the image of Christ. For many Russian traditionalists, the future paintings of men like Nikolai Ge, Ivan Kramskoy, Vasily Perov, Ilya Repin and others would push the divine too deep into the human realm. But for others, these works highlighted the darker yet undeniable realities of just how much our sinfulness has affected our holy God, and how the stories of the divine and the human have been forever intertwined. The recognition of these two paintings amid the context of this existential debate suggests a battle between those who would seek to warn others of the dangers of seeking forbidden knowledge, and others who found themselves unable to look away.

It is indeed interesting that neither painting renders the shock of the witch, choosing instead to make Saul’s shock the focal point. Perhaps this is as it should be. Because in the end, while the witch’s actual reaction is surprising, Saul’s reaction is the real focus. This passage may be the first time Saul realized that nothing—not even supernatural forces—could alter God’s will. That truth still haunts both of these historic canvases.

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Leviticus 19:31, 20:6, 20:27; Deuteronomy 18:10-12

1 Samuel 28:3

1 Samuel 28:5