Although painted in the seventeenth century, Ter Brugghen’s scene of Christ’s crucifixion draws on the dramatic, emotional appeal of earlier religious art to inspire the private prayers of a Catholic viewer. The Virgin Mary and John the Evangelist, who flank the cross, provide surrogates for the viewer’s agonized beholding of the crucifixion. The rigorous symmetry of the composition; the flat, star-studded sky; and Christ’s contorted body, with blood streaming from his wounds, intentionally refer to the work of early-sixteenth-century German artists, who were coveted by collectors in Ter Brugghen’s day.
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