Christ Is Burdened with the Cross

In 1731 Pope Clement XII allowed every church to set up the Stations of the Cross and fixed their number at 14. Painted Stations soon lined the walls of churches across Catholic central Europe, and this small sketch belongs with a companion piece to one such series. It is worked only in greys, in oil on paper barely 26 centimetres tall, and it shows the second Station. Men heave the heavy beams of the cross upright, a rider in a plumed helmet watches from his horse, and Christ, in pale robes, is dragged forward by a man gripping his arm. The Belvedere catalogues the pair under the name of Franz Joseph Spiegler and dates them to around 1780, although Spiegler died in 1757. Its records note that the sketches were earlier attributed to Franz Sigrist the Elder.