Calvary figures of Christ

These three images are perhaps the most representative of those used by image-makers to fill the niches in the base of characteristic Indo-Portuguese Calvary crosses: Christ praying; Christ with his hands tied; and Christ tied to a pillar. These small figures are not all the same size, which implies that their respective niches were of different dimensions. The treatment of Christ’s head in all three images is quite similar, with hair parted in the centre, coiling over his shoulders and falling down his back.
This placing of the hair over a low forehead allows us to attribute this group to an image-maker from the south of Malabar, where such morphological characteristics survive to this day.