Cristo crucificado

Velazquez painted this in Madrid in the early 1630s, not long after his first journey to Italy, where he had studied how Italian painters modelled the body in light. He was already court painter to Philip IV, his days mostly taken up with royal portraits. Here he does something very plain and very still. Christ hangs alone against a dark, empty ground, his head bowed so that a fall of hair half-covers one side of the face. It was painted for the nuns of the convent of San Placido in Madrid, an image made for private prayer. And look at the feet: they rest side by side, each fixed with its own nail. Velazquez's teacher and father-in-law, the painter Pacheco, had argued that this four-nail version was the historically correct one, and his pupil followed him.