In conclusion, Gauguin’s self-portraits as Christ are not an expression of the artist’s mysticism, for the evolution of facial features in his self-portraits proves the devolution of the artist as a human being: the divine half of his personality gradually vanished under the heavy burden of his savage instincts. The “sensitive” part that he had mentioned in his 1888 confession was defeated by his ever increasing savagery manifested in different forms: maliciousness, grotesquerie and eventually dehumanization and primitivism. Perhaps his identification with Christ represents his nostalgia for the lost “sensitive” part, yet the implications of his attaching savage attributes to divinity are outrageous. Not only did Gauguin initially deny the divinity of Christ and advocate his purely human nature, he ultimately made Christ into a savage just like himself. Gauguin’s arrogance as an individual, his deriding manner of treating others is well known; nonetheless these self-portraits as Christ push this arrogance to limits almost inconceivable by the human mind. These self-portraits demonstrate that in the end, even the degree to which Gauguin manifested his arrogance became inhuman. Having failed to elevate himself to the divine level, he denied the existence of the sensitive and the divine in general to hush up his failure. He debased divinity to inferior levels simply to banish his frustrations, for his only ambition was to engrave the word “eternity” on his canvases and he had failed to do so. However, in a last attempt to ensure the permanency of his art , Gauguin became the prey of an ancient mistake: he thought that given the noble purpose of his actions, the means were justified, even if that meant splattering the most supreme expression of divinity with the venom of his savagery.