The Gospel Cycle, in Order

The life of Christ was painted as a sequence, not as a set of separate pictures. A predella runs left to right, a fresco cycle runs around the walls, a carved altarpiece opens in a fixed order — and each panel assumes you have just seen the one before it. Sorting these works alphabetically or by artist destroys the only structure they were given. This index keeps the narrative order, from the stable to the empty tomb, so that the episodes sit in the sequence the painters expected their viewers already to know.

The Nativity and the Infancy

The stable, the shepherds, the magi and the flight into Egypt — and the Madonna and Child that grew out of them.

The infancy cycle covers the stable, the shepherds, the three kings, the circumcision and the flight into Egypt. Out of it grew the single most repeated composition in Western art — the Madonna and Child, lifted out of the narrative and set on its own as a devotional image. That is why this group is by far the largest: it holds both the story and the icon the story produced.

The Infant Jesus Distributing Bread to Pilgrims

Simeon with the Infant Jesus

St. Christopher with the Infant Christ and St. Peter

See all 22 works in The Nativity and the Infancy

The Baptism and the Ministry

The Jordan, the wilderness, the wedding at Cana and the supper table: the public years between childhood and arrest.

Between the infancy and the Passion sit the baptism in the Jordan, the calling of the disciples, the miracles and the Transfiguration. Painters treated this stretch far more sparsely than the two ends of the story, and the pictures that do exist are often narrow in shape — they were predella panels, the small horizontal scenes running under a large altarpiece, where the whole ministry might be given four boxes.

The Baptism of Christ

See all 35 works in The Baptism and the Ministry

The Passion

Gethsemane to Golgotha: the agony, the betrayal, the scourging, the crown of thorns and the road to Calvary.

The Passion begins at the entry into Jerusalem and runs through the Last Supper, the garden, the arrest, the trial and the mocking. It is the section of the story that was designed to be walked past rather than looked at once: these are the scenes that became the Stations of the Cross, and their compositions carry that use — figures close to the picture plane, few distractions, one clear action per panel.

The Flagellation of Christ

Christ Carrying the Cross

Christ Wearing the Crown of Thorns, Supported by Angels

See all 45 works in The Passion

The Crucifixion

The cross itself and what follows it: the descent, the lamentation, the Pieta and the entombment.

The Crucifixion is the fixed centre of the cycle and the most codified image in the tradition. The cross is placed off the ground with Mary and John at its foot; the Magdalen kneels; the sky darkens; the skull of Adam sometimes lies at the base. The Deposition, the Lamentation and the Pieta are the same event a few minutes later, and painters treated them as separate subjects with their own conventions.

The Dead Christ with the Virgin and St. Mary Magdalene

Crucifixion scene, Christ on the Cross with Mary and John

Lamentation for Christ

See all 52 works in The Crucifixion

The Resurrection

The empty tomb, Noli me tangere, the road to Emmaus, Thomas's hand and the ascension.

The last movement is the empty tomb, the Noli me tangere in the garden, the supper at Emmaus, the doubt of Thomas and the Ascension. These are recognition scenes, and painters staged them as such — the drama is in a face registering who it is looking at, which is why so many of them place the moment of recognition at the centre and let the setting fall away.

Resurrection and Descent of Christ into Limbo

Ascension of Jesus

Resurrection of Christ

See all 16 works in The Resurrection