Victory over death
Richard Harries reflects on how Christ’s crucifixion has been depicted over the ages
The first depiction of Jesus on the cross, on a small ivory panel in the British Museum dating from 420, shows him upright, arms outstretched, eyes open and very much alive. This is Jesus victorious on the cross. The Western Church never entirely lost sight of this theme. There are a good number of small metal crucifixes which survive from the 12th and 13th centuries, particularly from Scandinavia and Britain, which show Christ hanging, half-naked, his body sagging forward and his head on one side; but this battered figure has a crown on his head. From 1930 to the 1950s, somewhat against the odds, Jesus was once again sometimes depicted as Christus Victor, reigning from the tree.
In the early centuries of the Church’s history, artists were reluctant to depict Jesus dead on the cross, no doubt because they found it difficult to do this while at the same time doing justice to his divinity. However, by about the 8th century the theological controversies connected with this had been resolved, and Jesus began to be depicted dead on the cross, blood coming from his side and also from his feet, dripping down on to the skull of Adam, which legend said was buried in the hill where Jesus was crucified. The portrayal of Jesus dead on the cross emerged about this time in both the East and in Germany. There is a particularly moving Ottonian crucifix from the 10th century in Cologne Cathedral.
Strangely, this did not stop Cardinal Humbert being shocked by this scene when he visited Constantinople. In 1054 his anathema of the Eastern Church stated among other charges the question: ‘How do you come to fasten to Christ’s cross the picture of a dying man?’ Despite this, it was in the West that the emphasis on Christ’s suffering on the cross intensified. The canonical icons of the Orthodox Church of this scene are restrained in their emphasis. In the West, on the contrary, there was, during the mediaeval period, an ever more pronounced emphasis on the agony, physical and mental, of Jesus. This was significantly due to the influence of the religious orders, particularly the Franciscans, who encouraged devotees to imagine themselves before the cross, with all its horror, and to realise that this agony had been undergone for them.
One of the most powerful images of this period was Christ as the man of sorrows. Originally a Byzantine image, it came to the West and was much publicised by the Carthusians in Rome. The advent of printmaking resulted in religious art ceasing to be a purely public matter. Images were present in people’s homes and went with them on their travels, especially through the print by Israhel van Meckenem of about 1490, which shows Jesus from the waist up, hands crossed over one another, with the wounds prominent and his head on one side experiencing great sorrow. This type of devotional image has been described as the most precise visual expression of late mediaeval piety, bringing together image and viewer with a religious intensity which has rarely been surpassed. A prayer in the Franciscan prayer book to be said before this image goes:
Oh how intensely thou embraced me, good Jesu, when the blood went forth from thy heart, the water from thy side, the soul from thy body. Most sweet youth what hast though done that thou shouldest suffer so? Surely, I, too, am the cause of thy sorrow.
The most famous image of Christ in agony, however, is the one painted for the altar at Isenheim by Grünewald about 1515. Though the most popular German painter of his time, his work was hardly discussed in the 19th century. This changed dramatically when the painting was taken from Colmar to Munich for a year during 1918–19. The publicity surrounding this image at that time promulgated and reinforced a German self-image which saw in Grünewald — as well as, later, in 20th-century German Expressionism — the idea of an anguished, martyred, angst-ridden people. Not surprisingly, this image has resonated not just with Germans but also with many people during the terrible suffering of the 20th century. Paul Tillich named it the greatest German picture ever painted. Jesus is shown not just with his head bent right down in agony but with sharp thorns surrounding his head, his flesh torn by whips, with the splinters from the birches used in the flagellation embedded in his flesh.
During the 20th century, the image of Christ suffering in agony on the cross has been portrayed by innumerable painters, including some of the best-known names. But perhaps it is those of Rouault that speak to us most strongly. In fact, in Rouault there is not an undue emphasis on the suffering as such but his depictions are imbued with a sense of pity and compassion. Jesus is looking down on the viewer in a way which suffers but which is also tender. One of the most startling images is that of Chagall in his ‘White Crucifixion’, where he depicts many scenes of Jews being persecuted by the Nazis, and in the centre of the picture is Jesus on the cross dressed as a Jew, with a prayer shawl round his waist. The cross became a symbol of terror for the Jewish community in mediaeval times. So it is startling that Chagall, born of Jewish parents, should depict Jesus as a Jew suffering on the cross with his own people. This is the theme taken up by a contemporary Christian painter, Roger Wagner, in his powerful ‘Menorah’, set against the background of Didcot power station, now to be seen in St Giles, Oxford.
What was lost sight of in the 20th century — and this is still true of today — is any sense of the victory of the cross, the theme of the early Church. We have been so aware of the suffering of humanity and the power of wishful thinking that we are deeply suspicious of anything that suggests a happy ending. Added to this, of course, is the virtual impossibility of depicting in visual terms the Christian conviction that Christ is not only dead but also risen. Iris Murdoch wrote, ‘All that consoles is fake.’ We find it almost impossible to believe that, in a world where suffering is so unremitting and irreversible, there might be a glorious outcome, let alone one that might come across as Deus ex Machina. Yet the Christian conviction is that, through his life, death and resurrection, Jesus has won a decisive victory over evil and death, that he has made our redemption possible, and that we have a vocation and destiny whose consummation is beyond space and time. Is it possible still to convey that joyous faith in visual terms?
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