"The brash young artist James Ensor painted Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889 during a period of extraordinary artistic and political foment in his native Belgium. It is understood today to be one of the most dazzling, innovative, and perplexing paintings created in Europe in the late nineteenth century, and it rivals any work of its period in audacity and ambition.

Huge in scale, complex in design and execution, and brimming with social commentary, the painting is one of the most challenging works in the Getty Museum's paintings collection. This book examines Christ's Entry in light of Belgium's rich artistic, social, political, and theological debates in the late nineteenth century, and in the context of James Ensor's exceptional career, in order to decipher some of the painting's messages and meanings."--BOOK JACKET.