Christ on the Cross

In his last years Delacroix kept coming back to the Crucifixion, and this canvas, signed and dated 1853 at the lower left, is one of those returns. It is small, about 73 centimetres high, and it follows the Gospel of John, where Christ speaks to his mother and to his disciple John just before he dies. The Virgin, in blue and yellow, collapses into the arms of John and another Mary. Mary Magdalene kneels at the foot of the cross. In the lower right corner a man sits hunched with his head in his hand, and the gallery identifies him as Judas. Delacroix had two older pictures in mind, a great Crucifixion by Rubens in Antwerp and one by the French painter Pierre-Paul Prud'hon. The body on the cross has a grey-green pallor that the stormy sky picks up. The brush moves from thin wisps to thick clots of paint.