Le Christ en croix

By the time Murillo painted this crucified Christ, in the 1670s, Seville had passed its peak. A generation earlier plague had carried off close to half the city, and the river trade with the Americas that once made it rich was drifting downstream to Cádiz. Murillo was the painter everyone in town wanted, and much of his work went to churches and convents rebuilding their walls and their confidence. He set the figure against a dark, clouded sky, the body lit as if by a break in the weather. The slight turn of the torso and legs, which gives the form its weight and depth, comes from the prints of the Flemish master Anthony van Dyck, then circulating among Spanish painters. It is one of two Murillo crucifixions the Prado still holds.