The Crucifixion

In 1626 the Dominican monastery of San Pablo el Real in Seville, Spain, commissioned the young Francisco de Zurbarán to execute a cycle of paintings including The Crucifixion. This work was installed in a dimly lit space in the monastery, visible to visitors through a grill. Early commentators remarked on its powerful illusion of three-dimensionality, as though it was a sculpture rather than a painting. Set against a dark, empty background, the dramatically illuminated figure of Christ dying on the cross appears outside of time and place, both idealized in its quiet, graceful beauty and humanized by the individualized face and anatomical detail. The artist’s name and the date of the painting are inscribed on the curled scrap of paper at the base of the cross.

By depicting the crucifixion in austere isolation rather than as an event occurring outside amid a crowd of onlookers, Zurbarán was conforming to the aesthetic dictates of the Counter-Reformation. Beginning in the mid-sixteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church clarified and reaffirmed its doctrine and practices in an eff ort to combat the impact of the Protestant Reformation. This eff ort recognized the educational and inspirational value of visual images and required artists to work in a style that favored clarity and dramatic fervor.