The Crucifixion in Painting: From the Middle Ages to Post-Modernism

There have been several approaches to painting the Crucifixion during the past two Christian millennia. Byzantine Orthodoxy emphasized the divine glory of the Son of God, while Roman Catholicism focused more on the Savior's humanity and his redemptive sufferings. The stress on Christ's human nature and vulnerability has remained the most characteristic feature of Western Christian art, starting with the Renaissance. The image of the Crucifixion - the central event in Christian history - also remained widespread in the apparently secular and frequently atheistic modernist art scene.

Twentieth-century Crucifixions exhibited great novelty, variety, and complexity. Contemporary painters used the body on the cross to explore a wide range of social and spiritual concerns, including their distinct iconoclastic causes. What is the common denominator behind the incredible diversity of the avant-garde depictions of the crucified Jesus? According to the author, it consists of the transformation that the perception of the Crucifixion underwent in the twentieth century - from a religious event with crucial dogmatic and theological implications to a primary cultural archetype that symbolizes righteous suffering. As such, it has become the ideal vehicle for rendering the existential and social realities of the century's history.