Hand-painted in oil
About this Artwork
Christ on the cross, alone
The subject is the Crucifixion, reduced to its central figure. Spanish painting of the seventeenth century developed this austere type deliberately: the cross set against an undefined dark ground, the mourners and the landscape of Golgotha removed, and the whole burden of the episode carried by a single body. What remains legible is the moment itself, not the crowd around it.
Its place in the cycle
The Crucifixion stands at the centre of the Passion, after the road to Calvary and before the body is taken down. In a cycle it is the scene every earlier episode leads into; as a single canvas of this type it is detached from the sequence on purpose, made to be looked at rather than read.
What the record holds
The catalogue names Francisco de Zurbaran, 1627, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid. It measures 290 by 168 centimetres, a tall upright canvas at more than life size. The style is entered as Baroque and the artist as Spanish, and the subject fields carry only the religious classifications. The measured palette is recorded as neutral — the reading a picture returns when it is built from a pale figure and a dark ground with little colour between them.
Sources
7 references- Zurbarán, Francisco de — Getty ULAN
Spanish painter, 1598-1664
- Francisco de Zurbarán — Wikipedia
Francisco de Zurbarán ( ZOOR-bə-RAHN, Spanish: [fɾanˈθisko ðe θuɾβaˈɾan]; baptized 7 November 1598 – 27 August 1664) was a Spanish Baroque painter. He is known primarily for his religious paintings depicting monks, nuns, and martyrs, and fo
- Crucifixion of Christ — Wikidata
description: painting by Francisco de Zurbarán; inception: 1627-01-01; dimensions: 290.3 × 165.5 cm; collection: Art Institute of Chicago
- artic.edu — record for "Crucifixion of Christ"
Primary source record for this work (artic.edu).
- Christ on the Cross (Zurbarán) — Wikipedia
Christ on the Cross is a 1627 oil painting on canvas by the Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbarán, now in the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1626 Zurbarán signed a new contract with the Dominicans of San Pablo de Real Monastery in Seville to
- artic.edu — reference for "Christ on the Cross (Zurbarán)"
Authoritative source for this work (artic.edu).
- Francisco de Zurbarán - Christ on the Cross - WGA26051 — Wikimedia Commons
High-resolution image of the work, hosted on Wikimedia Commons.
