Christus im Hause der Martha

Martha receives Jesus and his disciples into her home. While she goes about her household chores her sister, Mary, sits at Jesus’s feet and listens to his words. Martha complains to Jesus who then explains to her that ‘Mary has chosen the good part’. It is this very moment when Jesus is talking to Martha that Le Sueur has captured here. One critic later praised Mary’s touched expression in particular that mirrors the effect of Jesus’s words. It is no coincidence that Le Sueur was considered ‘France’s Raphael’ in the eighteenth century.