PyeongyeAt a glance
- Christ, crowned with thorns, embraces a huge cross and lifts his eyes to the sky, seen up close.
- El Greco painted it in oil on canvas around 1577 to 1587, in Toledo, Spain.
- Stretched fingers, glistening eyes, and a fast-brushed sky make El Greco's way of painting easy to recognize.
Reading the picture
5 places to look closer
Tap a number on the painting to jump to its note, or a close-up to see that spot in the whole picture.
Zoom in on the face. Thorns from the crown pierce the forehead, leaving a few red drops of blood. The eyes turn upward. A dot of white paint in each one makes them shine as if wet with tears. The face looks less like pain than like someone longing for something far away.
Look at the upper hand resting on the cross. The fingers fan out and lie lightly on the wood. It does not grip a heavy load so much as hold something precious. Bright strokes catch the light along each knuckle.
Now move down to the lower hand. Its fingers, too, are unusually long and thin. People in El Greco's pictures often have stretched hands and bodies like this. He built the bones and veins on the back of the hand with just a few strokes.
Zoom in on the end of the cross at the upper right. The cut end of the crossbar juts out at an angle, as if it could poke out of the canvas. Behind it, gray and greenish clouds swirl in quick strokes. There is no crowd and no road here, only Christ, the cross, and the sky.
Look at the clothing. He wears a red robe underneath and a deep blue-green cloak on top. In Christian art Christ is often shown in a red robe and a blue mantle. The cloak's big folds wrap around his body and flow downward.
When it was painted
In 1577 a painter in his mid-thirties arrived in Toledo, Spain. He had started out painting icons on Crete, then spent years learning his craft in Venice and Rome. People called him El Greco, the Greek.
Toledo handed him two big jobs almost at once. One was a set of altarpieces for the convent church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo. Its centerpiece, The Assumption of the Virgin, now hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago, and you can see it on this site. The other was The Disrobing of Christ for the sacristy of Toledo Cathedral.
That second picture led to a fight over money. The cathedral objected that heads in the crowd rose above Christ's own head. It also complained that he had placed three Marys in the foreground of a scene where the Gospels do not put them. In the end appraisers had to settle the price.
El Greco also hoped to work for the king. Philip II ordered The Martyrdom of Saint Maurice for the monastery of El Escorial, but the king did not like it, and no more big royal commissions came. El Greco stayed in Toledo, where his son Jorge Manuel was born in 1578. He lived there until his death in 1614.
His workshop painted the same subjects again and again, and Christ carrying the cross was one of them. Centuries later this version belonged to the American banker Robert Lehman. It came to the Metropolitan Museum in 1975 with the rest of his collection.
Now look at the painting again. In the cathedral picture, Christ is hemmed in by a crowd. Here the crowd is gone. Only the cross, the sky, and those wet, lifted eyes remain.
Questions to think about
- Look for itCan you find the red drops of blood running down Christ's neck, beside his long hair?
- Why?Why do you think El Greco painted the hands that carry such a heavy cross so lightly and gently?
- What about you?How is gritting your teeth through something hard different from willingly taking it on? Is there a burden in your own life that you have chosen to embrace?
Same period
Painted around the same time,
somewhere else
Too good to keep to yourself
This painting,
for someone who comes to mind
They open it at full size
and see every brushstroke.
About this work
- Artist
- El Greco · 1540–1614
- Date
- ca. 1577–87
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Size
- 105 × 79 cm
- Collection
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Image
- Original long edge 3890px · shown at 2560px
- Original
- View on the museum's website ↗