Audio Stop 532

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Three pale-skinned people stand around a cross from which hangs the twisted and bloodied body of a nearly nude man set in a dark, rocky landscape in this vertical painting. The man on the cross wears a ring of spiky thorns on his head and a white loincloth encircles his waist. His white skin is tinted green and covered all over with short red gashes. His body hangs heavily from his hands, which are nailed to the cross so his arms make a shallow Y shape. His head hangs down, and his eyes and mouth are open. His feet coil around a nail near the base of the cross. A man wearing a crimson-red garment under a pale blue and pink robe stands to our right facing the cross. He has blond hair, white skin, red rings around his eyes, and his fingers are tightly interlaced and twisted in an exaggerated prayer. One woman stands to our left, wearing a teal-blue and brown robe that covers her bowed head. She gazes down beyond her clasped hands and her mouth is downturned. A second woman wearing an ash-purple garment over a raspberry-pink robe kneels at the cross to our left. She holds her hands up at her chest as she looks up at the person on the cross, her mouth open wide. Rocky outcroppings rise along either side of the painting in the landscape, and a house is seen at the center beyond the cross. A dark disk covers a small bright moon in the dark blue, nighttime sky.

Matthias Grünewald

The Small Crucifixion, c. 1511/1520

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 35-A

Silhouetted against a greenish-blue sky and illuminated by an undefined light source, Jesus’s emaciated frame sags limply on the cross. His twisted feet and hands, crown of thorns, agonized expression, and ragged loincloth convey the terrible physical and emotional suffering he has endured. The mood is intensified by the anguished faces and demonstrative gestures of John the Evangelist, the Virgin Mary, and the kneeling Mary Magdalene. Matthias Grünewald’s dissonant, eerie colors are both expressive and rooted in the biblical narrative. The murky sky, for instance, corresponds to Luke’s description of “a darkness over all the earth” at the time of the crucifixion.

Read full audio transcript

JOHN HAND:
“This is John Hand, curator of Northern Renaissance Painting. We are looking at the only painting by Matthias Grunewald in North America. Entitled The Small Crucifixion, it is certainly one of the most gruesome and physically harrowing works of art in the National Gallery of Art. It depicts the dead Christ on the cross, his body so heavy that it bends down the crossbeam. His body is covered with sores, it has been beaten it is discolored. He is mourned by the Virgin, on the left, John the Evangelist at the right; and kneeling at the foot of the cross is the Magdalene wearing purple and blue.”

“The emotional impact of this painting derives from the genius of Grunewald; he is one of the great colorists of the 16th century. There is a slightly acid quality to the tints and hues The pose of John, how his wrists and his hands are bent back in a very awkward angle--it’s almost physically painful to imagine yourself doing that.”

NARRATOR:
In translating his deep spiritual faith into pictorial form, Grunewald borrowed these grotesque images from the visions of a 14th-century mystic, St. Bridget of Sweden. She wrote about the crucifixion as if she were an eyewitness, stressing Christ’s physical suffering. Grunewald underscores the grim nature of the scene with such details as Christ’s tattered loincloth and the oppressive dark blue above – a sky that seems far more mysterious and intense than normal.

JOHN HAND:
“If you look at the upper right, just above the cross bar, you can see that an eclipse of the sun has taken place, and such an eclipse of the sun occurred in 1502 and probably made a deep impression on Grunewald and other citizens of Germany. It also, of course, is in accord with the biblical description of how the sky grew dark at the time of the crucifixion.”

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