CROSS ART
A Brief Look at How the Church Celebrated the Cross in Art
As a symbol of our faith, the cross is a central image of Christianity. Our cross is empty while specific churches will have a dead or dying Jesus on the cross. This is called a crucifix. That our cross is empty is a statement that Jesus is no longer on the cross and symbolizes his resurrection.
I want to take you on a little journey of how the church has celebrated the cross in art over the centuries. How did the Early Church view the cross? Why do we view it the way we do today? And how does the image of the cross inform our worship?
Our present culture is obsessed with visual depictions of death. Our TV and movies spare no imagination in showing us exactly how bloody and gory killing can be. This is a huge contrast to the way the gospel writers talked about the crucifixion of Jesus. Look at these scriptures and note the simplicity:
John 19:17-18 “Carrying his own cross, he went out to the Place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). Here they crucified him, and with him two others – one on each side and Jesus in this middle.
Matthew 27:35 “When they had crucified him…”
Mark 15:24 “And they crucified him…”
Luke 23:33 “When they came to the place called The Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals…”
What do you notice? Each writer spoke of the crucifixion as a bare fact. No soldiers hammering nails into Jesus’ hands; no details about how his position on the cross made him gasp for air. Simply this: they crucified him. That was enough. The first century readers would know exactly what that meant.
Slaves, the poor, criminals and rebels were crucified in the thousands for various crimes. The form of crucifixion differed, but the execution was brutal and violent, designed to publicly shame the victim by displaying him or her in a repulsive manner.
That Jesus suffered such an undignified death was an embarrassment to some early Christians. This is one reason that for three hundred years, the church never painted or carved a scene of the crucifixion. Another reason was that Christianity was outlawed in the Roman Empire and to wear a cross around your neck or hang a painting in your house told everyone you were a hated Christian.
The oldest known image of the cross of Jesus is this infamous piece of graffiti dating to the 3rd century in Rome. It clearly mocks Jesus’ manner of death as it portrays a donkey-headed male figure on a cross. The implication is that Christians were being ridiculed for worshiping a man who died by crucifixion.
Another symbol close to a cross is what’s called a staurogram, used later by Christians.
But generally, there were no crucifixes in the first centuries. The closest thing was this cross with the first two letters of Christ’s name (the chi and the rho).
After 400 years, someone carved this ivory panel showing the Jesus story. Note Judas hanging from the tree. They packed a lot of “story” into one image. Jesus is depicted nearly naked with nails visible in his hands and feet.
Following a church council that confirmed Jesus is fully human and fully divine, art emerged that reflected this belief. In 586 AD, a Syriac painting revealed Christ as a human nailed to the cross but with a halo and a liturgical or priestly clothing signifying his role as priest in this sacrifice. Notice that Christ’s body does not sag on the cross. He is alive and his arms are straight out as if in exultation. The cross of Christ is flanked by a man offering a vinegar sponge on one side and a soldier piecing Jesus’ side on the other.
For the next four or five centuries, Christ will be envisioned on the cross but as priest and king. This image is from the 8th century and shows Christ with arms extended in victory. Jesus wears full priestly garments and a royal crown.
This Romanesque version has Jesus alive but only wearing a skirt. The arms bend but do not sag from the weight of the body. The intention of both of these choices was to show that death did not master Jesus.
Then in the Gothic period, the 12th to the 16th centuries, artists began to paint or carve Jesus as dead on the cross. The arms sag from the weight of the body, and blood flows from all five wounds. A simple cloth girds his waist versus the priestly garments of earlier centuries. It seems that the church had accepted the reality of Christ’s death, became more comfortable with depicting it, especially considering the resurrection.
Andrea Mantegna painted “The Crucifixion” around 1457 to 1459 in some of the most vibrant colors. Christ is either near death or has died on the cross. He is not alone as we see the two men crucified with him. There is a host of people present: the four Marys, possibly Nicodemus (in red), and Romans waiting for the victims to die. Standing to the right of Jesus is the soldier who thrust the spear into Christ’s side. What is really cool about the way the painting is designed is not only that Christ is the main focus, but the lines of the painting draw our eyes to Christ. Even the two thieves are angled towards Jesus. There are a variety of emotions when we look at this art: sadness at Christ’s death, but the salvation of humanity highlighted in the bright colors.
Today we see in many North American mainline churches this typical crucifix. It shows Jesus expired; he wears an unadorned, simple cloth tied at the waist and otherwise naked; his eyes are closed; his head slumps to one side and the arms sag from the weight of the body. Where the early artwork of the church aimed at showing Jesus’ divinity, the latter works emphasize his humanity – the reality that as a man, he died.
Cinema is art too. And the ways in which Jesus’s death on the cross has been portrayed has changed over time as well. In “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (1965), the scene of Jesus’ crucifixion is seen in a panorama, zoomed out, not too close in this scene. Even the crowd stands far off, and the Romans keep their distance.
The Christ of “Jesus of Nazareth” (1977) comes to us as a blue-eyed Western-looking Jesus who frankly did not have much emotion. His gaze would have been terrifying. On the cross, we see a sanitized or clean Jesus – I mean, there is not much evidence of his brutalization before being crucified, no blood, no visible trauma.
And that’s fine. As I said earlier, we don’t need our imaginations scarred by the reality of the crucifixion. “The Jesus Film” (1979), put out by Campus Crusade, was not meant to be graphic either. Based on the gospel according to Luke, the intention was to bring the gospel to many nations through cinema. To date, the Jesus film has been translated into over 2160 languages, the most translated film in history. Sharon went to Brazil in 1984 to help show the film in Portuguese.
Finally, Mel Gibson went all out in the Passion of the Christ (2004) to show us all the gore and suffering of Jesus. It brings us as close to the reality of Jesus’ suffering on the cross that we could ever conceive. Being Catholic, it is no surprise that Gibson’s depiction contains several allusions to the Stations of the Cross bears a resemblance to the crucifixes of those churches.
The cross of Christ is a symbol of our faith, an expression of the deeper reality of what happened in AD 29, when Jesus was nailed to a tree. We do not worship the cross. That would be idolatry. But it reminds us of the sacrifice of Jesus and the love of God for all of us. We look upon it to remember, “Oh what a Savior!” and “For God so loved the world.”
The Apostle Paul spoke of the cross in this way: “It is foolish to the Jews, who ask for signs from heaven. And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek human wisdom. So, when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended, and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense. But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God,” (1 Cor. 1:22-24 NLT).
So, we preach Christ crucified!!!
AMEN
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