Christ Carrying the Cross

Juan de Juanes actively worked out his ideas in this drawing, first in black chalk lines, which are faintly visible under the bolder pen-and-ink forms. In the earlier chalk rendition, he drew the figure of Christ farther to the left, carrying the cross with his right arm. The soldier to the right, leading him by the rope about his neck, was also father to the left, while two additional soldiers, faintly drawn in the top right, were not developed in pen. The Holy Women kneeling before him also changed when Juanes finished the drawing in pen after making the chalk underdrawing. He used the brown ink to model the forms in three dimensions with extensive, insistent hatching and cross-hatching. The artist's technique and the spatial clarity of the individual figures reflect the influence of Raphael, whose paintings he studied on a visit to Italy around 1560.