Christ Carrying the Cross

Cornelis van Poelenburch, one of the most renowned Dutch painters of his time, had a remarkable ability to evoke the distant past, whether in the Holy Land or the Italian countryside near Rome. In his works, a silvery light, softened and diffused by gentle clouds that spread across blue skies, quietly floods the gently rolling countryside, giving it an aura of age and venerability. His nuanced atmospheric effects were further enhanced by the inclusion of ancient ruins, which provided a visual and historical framework for the small-scale mythological and biblical figures that populate his landscapes, such as those seen in Christ Carrying the Cross. In this work, painted in Rome, he has adapted the ancient Tomb of Cecilia Metella on the Appian Way, built around 50 BC, into the large ruin on the right.

Christ, wearing a purple robe and a crown of thorns and struggling under the weight of the cross, looks back at the kneeling Veronica, who holds the linen cloth on which Christ’s image was miraculously imprinted when she wiped the sweat and blood off his brow. The group around them includes not only Christ’s tormentors but, more important, the sorrowful friends and family who accompany Christ to Golgotha: the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and behind them John the Evangelist, who covers his eyes in grief with the sleeve of his red robe. The elderly men with blue hats in the middle of the crowd are almost certainly Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, who later would assist in Christ’s burial. The group is led by the Roman centurion Longinus, fierce on his rearing steed.

Poelenburch’s interpretation of Christ Carrying the Cross belongs to a long pictorial tradition, yet its character is surprisingly different from earlier examples in northern and Italian art. While most artists created vertical compositions that focused closely on Christ and the figures immediately surrounding him, Poelenburch chose to depict relatively small figures in an extensive Italianate landscape, which serves as a natural stage for this dramatic moment from the New Testament.