Le Christ en croix

Murillo spent his whole career in Seville, a city hit hard in 1649 by a plague that killed a large part of its people. In the years that followed, demand grew for images made not for public display but for private prayer, and Murillo painted several versions of Christ alone on the cross for exactly that purpose. This is one of them. There is no crowd and no soldiers, only the lit figure against a darkening sky, with the outline of Jerusalem in the mist below and a skull among the rocks at the foot of the cross, the old sign for Adam. It was meant to be looked at slowly, by one person at a time.