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Christ on the Cross

El Grecoc. 1600–1610

The Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cleveland Museum of Art
Cleveland, United States

El Greco (Spanish for "the Greek") was trained on his native island, Crete, as a painter of small-scale devotional images (icons). In the late 1560s he moved first to Venice, where he may have worked with Tintoretto (1518-1594), and then to Rome. Finally, he settled in Toledo, Spain. Tintoretto's influence is visible here in the colors and in the elongated figural proportions. The graphic depiction of blood, however, may reflect the Spanish interest in Christ's sufferings as a subject for meditation.

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  • Title: Christ on the Cross
  • Creator: El Greco (Spanish, 1541–1614)
  • Date Created: c. 1600–1610
  • Physical Dimensions: Framed: 221 x 144 x 10 cm (87 x 56 11/16 x 3 15/16 in.); Unframed: 193 x 116 cm (76 x 45 11/16 in.)
  • Provenance: Convent of the Salesas, Madrid, Spain, Tomas Harris, London, England, (Rudolf Heinemann, New York, NY), (M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art), The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Type: Painting
  • Rights: CC0
  • External Link: https://clevelandart.org/art/1952.222
  • Medium: oil on canvas
  • Inscriptions: Inscription on plaque at top of cross, in Hebrew, Greek and Latin: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews
  • Department: European Painting and Sculpture
  • Culture: Spain, 17th century
  • Credit Line: Gift of the Hanna Fund
  • Collection: P - Spanish before 1800
  • Accession Number: 1952.222
The Cleveland Museum of Art

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