Artwork Page for Christ on the Cross

Details / Information for Christ on the Cross

Christ on the Cross

c. 1600–1610

El Greco

(Spanish, 1541–1614)
Culture
Spain
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
Framed: 221 x 144 x 10 cm (87 x 56 11/16 x 3 15/16 in.); Unframed: 193 x 116 cm (76 x 45 11/16 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of the Hanna Fund 1952.222
Public Domain
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Location
212 Baroque Painting and Sculpture
Print

Description

El Greco (Spanish for "the Greek") was trained on his native island, Crete, as a painter of small-scale devotional images (icons). In the late 1560s he moved first to Venice, where he may have worked with Tintoretto (1518-1594), and then to Rome. Finally, he settled in Toledo, Spain. Tintoretto's influence is visible here in the colors and in the elongated figural proportions. The graphic depiction of blood, however, may reflect the Spanish interest in Christ's sufferings as a subject for meditation.
A vertically oriented oil painting depicts Christ, a man with light skin tone and elongated limbs nailed to a "T"-shaped cross in front of a dark, swirling, cloudy sky. He wears a cloth around his waist and a crown of thorns around his head, blood dripping from the nails in his hands on either side and his feet, one over the other. He looks up to our left, a plaque above his head (see "Inscriptions").

Christ on the Cross

c. 1600–1610

El Greco

(Spanish, 1541–1614)
Spain

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