Golgota

Munch painted Golgotha in 1900, during a stretch of illness and nervous strain when he was in and out of a sanatorium in the Norwegian mountains. It takes the oldest Christian image, the crucifixion, and turns it into something about himself. The pale figure on the cross has been read as carrying Munch's own features, and below him a dense crowd of staring, distorted faces presses toward the viewer. Artists of his generation sometimes cast themselves as the crucified outsider, mocked by the mass around them, and that feeling, rather than any devotional message, is what runs through the picture. The ring of faces along the bottom is painted in the same anxious, high colour as the sky behind the cross.