Jerusalém

By 1867 Gérôme had made his name on lush, sensual scenes of the East, and here he turns to the Crucifixion, a subject painted ten thousand times before him. Then he does something almost nobody had dared. He keeps the three crosses out of the frame entirely. All you see of the execution is three long shadows thrown across the bare ground of Golgotha by a stormy light, while the crowd streams back toward Jerusalem in the distance under a heavy sky. He had travelled repeatedly through the Holy Land and wanted the place to feel archaeologically real, less a holy image than a spot on a map at a particular hour. Critics hated it. Leaving Christ out of a Crucifixion drew some of the sharpest reviews of Gérôme's whole career.