Christ Bearing the Cross

The procession has just come out through a city gate, and two onlookers still lean from its arch. Christ, in a dark red robe and the crown of thorns, stoops under a cross so long that it reaches back over the crowd. A rope is tied round his waist. Around him come soldiers with spears and a black banner, a man carrying a ladder, and a man in red hustling along one of the thieves, bare-chested. Mary follows in a green mantle, one hand pressed to her chest, with John beside her. The ground is a bed of loose pebbles, painted stone by stone. The panel once belonged to a winged altarpiece made around 1430. In 1922 the Kunsthistorisches Museum bought it from the Berlin dealer Paul Cassirer, who was better known for promoting van Gogh and Cézanne.