Crucified Christ Research Articles

Francesco Placidi and Ludwig Ladislaus. On architect and sculptor partnership in the 1740s and 1750s

Two artists, Francesco Placidi from Rome and sculptor Ludwig Ladislaus from Opava, played a significant role in Krakow artistic circles of the 1740s and 1750s. Placidi was brought to Poland by another Roman architect, Gaetano Chiaveri, under whose guidance he directed the construction of the court church in Dresden, and was active in Kraków since 1742. Ladisalus was first recorded in the records of the city of Krakow in 1741. The two lived in the same parishes, first All Saints’ and then St Mary’s, and were connected both socially and professionally. Following the study of sources and styles, it was determined that Placidi designed and Ladilaus executed the interior furnishings of the parish church in Morawica (c. 1748–55) funded by Aleksander August and Maria Zofia Czartoryski, the main altar in the Sanctuary of the Crucified Christ in Kobylanka (c. 1750) funded by Jan Wielopolski, and the main altar in the former collegiate church in Sandomierz (1756–57). A detailed investigation outlined the origin of architectural solutions defined by Placidi and captured the stylistic and formal features that Ladislaus’s sculptures share. The case is but a contribution to further research on the mutual relations between designers and makers of architecture and sculptures. Especially with respect to the roles of both the Italian architect imposing (or not) the general and/or detailed concept of the work, and the sculptor following (or not) the designer’s ideas, yet also contributing his own formal and stylistic solutions resulting from his individual artistic path of development (in the case of Ladislaus: in the Austrian Silesia). Beyond doubt, with his extensive contacts with ecclesiastical and secular aristocracy and the royal court, Placidi played an important role in Kraków, providing a link between artists of various professions, and maintaining familial and social contacts with some.

Life of the painter Eduard Lind (1827–1904)

The contribution aims to reconstruct the so far unresearched life of the Hamburg-born painter Eduard Lind. He came to Maribor at the end of 1855, settled in the city as well as lived and worked there until his death in 1904. The first commissions in Maribor included painting the ceiling of the city’s new cadet school, constructed between 1853 and 1856. Lind became part of the Maribor Evangelical community and a member of the presbytery. As may be gathered from written sources, he was a popular citizen of Maribor and an acknowledged painter. He portrayed many citizens and produced the oil painting of the Crucified Christ, which was mounted in the newly constructed Evangelical church in 1869. Lind died in great poverty and was buried at the expense of the Evangelical community.

Indices in Ivory: Inspiring Affective Piety with a Walrus Ivory Christ

The Crucified Christ (Figure 1), now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, captures both Christ’s serene acceptance of death and the graphic reality of mortality in a way rarely seen in medieval ivory carvings. Crafted by a Parisian artisan working in either England or Cologne around 1300, the seven-inch-tall statue now stands devoid of its arms and the small crucifix to which it was originally attached.1 Christ is depicted with his head falling slightly forward, the smooth S-curve of his body emphasizing his youthful form and artfully crossed legs. Scant remains of gold leaf on Christ’s hair and beard encircle the figure’s face in a heavenly light, emphasizing Christ’s calm dignity which was maintained even in death. Remnants of red paint accentuate Christ’s side wound and trail downward, mimicking the appearance of a trickle of dried blood. What makes this piece notable, however, is not the style in which it was carved, but the medium itself—walrus ivory. I argue that the material of the Crucified Christ, as manipulated by the sculptor, lends itself to affective contemplation, shaping the viewer’s devotional experience. By examining how sight, light, touch, and theology shaped a viewer’s perception of the work, I demonstrate how such pieces served to close the gap between the absent divine and the affective devotee.

Os Santos d’Afurada. Arte, devoção e comunidade. Dimensão artística, devocional e antropológica

This paper is a reflection on a set of ten images and a Via Sacra conceived by the sculptor Altino Maia (1911-1988), between 1955 and 1957, for the new parish church of São Pedro da Afurada (Vila Nova de Gaia). The study addresses the images in several dimensions: artistic and iconographic, including ordering processes and creation; the anthropological, detailing the community’s reception and reaction to these sculptures. Nine of the images were «hidden» in cabinets for long years, removed from the eyes of the faithful, received the popular and derogatory names of «Santos Pretos» or «Santos das Rodilhas» and were even victims of aggression attempts. The sculpture of the Crucified Christ was exhibited on the apse’s back wall until 2021 and the Via Sacra continues to be displayed on the north wall of the parish church of São Pedro da Afurada.Basedon the documentary and visual sources of the time and the testimony of some inhabitants of Afurada, this paper intends to analyze the circumstances of commissioning and artistic creation, developing an iconographic study of the images, contextualizing them in their time and to understand these object-images (in line with Jérôme Baschet) from an anthropological perspective

Religious Satire and the Crucified Christ

Abstract This article discusses the relationship between religious satire and Christian theology to explore the possibility of satiric theology. It takes its departure from the proclamation of the cross (cf. 1 Cor 1:27) to demonstrate that the Crucified Christ can be a source for satire. To accomplish this, Paul Simpson’s analysis of satire is used to analyse the notorious crucifixion scene of Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Subsequently, by way of Stanley Hauerwas’s theorising of irony, it is argued that satiric theology is theology in iconoclastic fashion. Hence, satiric theology supplies alternative comical stories to estrange people from the familiar and challenge misconceptions, thereby offering a valuable contribution to theological debate and Christian practice.

Crítica de la razón andina ed. by Carlos Abreu Mendoza, y Denise Y. Arnold

Reviewed by: Crítica de la razón andina ed. by Carlos Abreu Mendoza, y Denise Y. Arnold Anne Lambright Abreu Mendoza, Carlos, y Denise Y. Arnold, eds. Crítica de la razón andina. A contracorriente, 2018. 186 pp. The product of several years of cross-disciplinary dialogue, Crítica de la razón andina is a welcome and necessary addition to contemporary reflections on the meaning of "lo andino" and "Andeanism" in studies devoted to the region most commonly known as the Andes. Specifically, the introduction tells us, the volume seeks to question certain paradigms that have come to dominate Andean studies: a limiting insistence on the center/periphery and global/local binaries, the centrality of Peru, and unquestioned national metanarratives. In the introduction, co-editor Carlos Abreu Mendoza tells us, "nuestro enfoque propone examinar las distribuciones empíricas, estéticas, políticas y disciplinarias a las que se somete lo andino y que lo llevan a encarnarse en conceptos como andinismo y andinidad" (2). In the end, the essays in the volume demand that Andean studies abandon its dominant paradigms and embrace the translocal and transnational nature of lo andino, its debt to cultures beyond the highlands, and its fluid, mobile character. Abreu Mendoza's introduction is a valuable exploration of predominant tendencies in Andean studies, from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives, that prepares the subsequent essays well by providing a succinct intellectual history of the major thinkers and currents in the field. For Abreu Mendoza, the goal, in his essay and through the larger volume, is to "construir una genealogía de los Andes como concepto regulatorio de los imaginarios sociales que han dado forma a los debates sobre lo andino" (2). The bibliography that informs Abreu Mendoza is impressively extensive, and Abreu Mendoza does an admirable job parsing out the complex nuances of disciplinary perspectives. As part of the volume's attempt to decentralize Andean studies through examining Andean spaces other than Peru, co-editor Denise Arnold's chapter, "Beyond 'lo andino': Rethinking Tiwanaku from the Amazonian Lowlands," deconstructs the importance of the archeological site of Tiwanaku in contemporary Bolivian political discourse and the nation's dominant Andean-centric cultural identity. By questioning the prevailing narrative regarding the Aymaran origins of Tiwanaku and instead highlighting the pluriethnic character of the site, this chapter contributes to the volume's questioning of the center/periphery binary and focuses on the fluidity of cultural exchange as a driver of lo andino. Ultimately, Arnold argues, "Thinking about the connections across Bolivia, instead of its internal divisions, would help us construct new models of productive, technological and ideological exchanges" (47). Caroline A. Garriott's chapter, "Carrying Water on Both Shoulders: Material Archives and Andean Ritual in Mid-Colonial Huamanga, Peru," provides a fascinating reading of an unedited 1684 colonial text that recounts evangelization efforts in seventeenth-century Huamanga and devotion to a particularly resilient Christ figure. Written by a Jesuit priest, Nicolás de Talavera, the text recounts local [End Page 283] devotion to a statue of the Crucified Christ, which had survived multiple assaults by idolaters; for Talavera, devotion to the statue signaled the successful indoctrination of the region. Garriott delivers an inspired subversive reading of Talavera's text, uncovering aspects of Andean spirituality in what purports to be an accounting of Christian domination by exposing and analyzing indigenous spiritual aspects in the work. Garriott offers this analysis as a model for approaching other historical texts, through ethnographic readings that "plac(e) equal analytical weight to both Andean cosmopraxis and Western Christianity" (81). Jorge Coronado's superb chapter, "Sobre la noción de lo andino: Ciencia, literatura y consumo," guides the reader through three diverging approaches to lo andino, from early developments in the field. Beginning with a discussion of three nineteenth-century texts published under the title Antigüedades peruanas, by Mariano Eduardo de Rivera y Ustariz, Coronado traces the development of a dominant conception of lo andino, rooted in an imperial past recalled in contemporary ruins and thus decidedly marked by archeology and anthropology. This first manifestation, lo andino científico, is further explored through Julio Tello's erroneous identification of the Chavín culture as...

Pain in Representations of Intimacy with the Crucified Christ in Lutgard of Tongeren and Catherine of Siena as Impulse to Innovative Iconographies

Pain was also in the late Middles Ages a vehicle of transcendental experience and of mystical enactment in particular. It appears to have been a current topic in the figurative and imaginative world of religious orders, among their members and in several orders' representational practices. The severity of physical pain is in these cases continuously combined with their emotional meaning and is instrumental to the enactment of emotional pain, thus relating the one with the other. Two female saints are particularly representative for their accounts of physical pain experiences and this can be considered for a paradigmatic interpretation of pain in a devotional context as being valid even beyond the narrow frame of "Western" art: Catherine of Siena and Lutgard von Tongeren. Figurative representations of both saints show how they indulged in their own bodily pain and became paradigms for castigatory practices in general. But they have to be seen in parallel to the literary accounts of the castigation practices they followed. The early modern resumption of contents related to such scenes, therefore, showed the strength of a longue durée tradition across Christian art way beyond the late Middle Ages.

Animated Sculptures of the Crucified Christ: Origins, Development and Impact

Animated sculptures of the crucified Christ represent an extremely broad and methodologically intriguing challenge for scholars. Their unusual construction (e.g. moveable arms, legs, head, tongue, eyes, various covers imitating human skin, wigs, receptacles for blood) and the varied functions they fulfilled during the liturgical year make these figures one of the most intriguing manifestations of late medieval piety. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that contemporary study of them should diverge from previous—and still the most common—approaches that concentrate on their use in Depositio Crucis ceremonies, typical for northern parts of medieval Europe. The article shows that the only effective way of analyzing them is to take a genuinely interdisciplinary approach, starting with a radically expanded base of historical evidence and source material. Only thorough studies that combine a reflection on the real substance of their functioning with analysis of their essential character, manifested during various kinds of Good Friday ceremonies as well as across the whole liturgical year, can enhance our knowledge and understanding of the presence and role of these sculptures in the religious consciousness and mentality of the Middle Ages.

Religion and immigration

A documentary focused on the cult of the Crucified Christ, known to a Peruvian community living in Italy as the “Lord of the Miracles.” History of this devotion stretches back to 1651, in the outskirts of Lima (known as La Ciudad de los Reyes –“the city of kings”– in viceregal Peru).
 Today this image of the Christ –originally painted by an Angolan slave– is venerated throughout October in Peru as well as in every nation where Peruvian immigrant communities have formed around the so-called “Brotherhood of the Lord of the Miracles.” Rome’s is considered the most significant such community because of its presence in the Eternal City and its proximity to Saint Peter’s successors.
 The video documentary presents the history, religious ways and lived anthropology of an immigrant community in diaspora. We seek to express the meaning the cult holds among the faithful, according to what its prominent members have described and lived. We observe the religious observances’ character, their various key moments and the social as well as symbolic importance they hold for Peruvian immigrant communities in Italy’s capital city.

Patrides, Plotinus and the Cambridge Platonists

ABSTRACTDiscussion of the Cambridge Platonists, by Constantinos Patrides and others, is often vitiated by the mistaken contrasts drawn between those philosophers and late antique Platonists such as Plotinus. I draw attention especially to Patrides’s errors, and argue in particular that Plotinus and his immediate followers were as concerned about this world and our immediate duties to our neighbours as the Cambridge Platonists. Even the doctrine of deification is one shared by all Platonists, though it is also here that genuine differences between pre-Christian and Christian exegesis can be found. All, it can be said, hope and expect to join ‘the dance of immortal love’, but Christian Platonists had a deeper sense of God’s ‘humility’ in His Word’s material and temporal manifestation. Not Olympian Zeus but the Crucified Christ was their preferred image of divine involvement, and their better guide to heaven.

Religiosidade e suas manifestações no espaço urbano de Salvador

O Brasil foi descoberto e ocupado sob a égide do cristianismo, reforçado pelo movimento da Contrarreforma Católica. Promovida pela Igreja Católica Apostólica Romana, opunha-se à Reforma Protestante, reafirmava o uso das imagens e ditava uma série de normas a serem seguidas pelos fiéis, expressas nas Constituições Primeiras do Arcebispado da Bahia, de 1707. A Contrarreforma enfatizou a importância das manifestações públicas de fé, a maior participação da população nas coisas da Igreja. As procissões foram o exemplo típico dessas manifestações, promovidas, especialmente, pelas Irmandades e/ou ordens terceiras leigas. Nas procissões, ou cenários públicos de fé, as imagens das figuras santas e festas barrocas tiveram um papel primordial. Dentre elas, se resgatou um uso medieval das marionetes - acrescido da dramaticidade tirada do teatro de ópera -, transformadas em imagens de roca e de vestir. Estas constituíram, sobretudo no século XVIII, instrumentos eficientes para despertar a fé de leigos e religiosos. As ruas e praças - do antigo centro histórico da cidade do Salvador - serviram de grande cenário, no qual evoluía a maior parte das procissões. Destacavam-se as procissões dos Mistérios da Paixão, de Corpus Christi ou cenas correlatas, em datas fixas ou móveis, ao lado da multiplicação das representações da Santíssima Trindade, especialmente a cruz ou o Cristo Crucificado.

Talking to God: the use of images in the Dominican nunneries of late medieval Teutonia

Several convent chronicles from within the Dominican Province of Upper Germany dating back to the 14th and 15th centuries provide interesting insight into the manner in which works of art were utilized in late medieval religious life. Amongst other findings, study of the sources reveals that the nuns used images of the Mother of God and of the Crucified Christ not always and not only to meditate upon and commemorate the facts of salvation, but above all to receive support and solace in times of distress. The conception of icons derived from these sources is of the merging of archetype and image and of the indwelling of the person depicted in the image. Examples such as St Katharinental in northeastern Switzerland, where a large supply of images has been preserved in addition to numerous statues, are of particular interest for the study.

L'expérience paulinienne d'une identité en tension

This article about the tension undergone by Paul in his identity begins by stressing the complexity of the character by briefly recalling the three cultures to which he belonged. It goes on to examine the reversal of all his certitudes on the road to Damascus, at a moment when, in his elitist conception of a chosen people, his was an extreme view of an exclusive identity on the way to becoming a murderous one. He was then sent onto the path of God the creator whose grace in Jesus-Christ, crucified and risen from the dead, is offered to all nations. Not a universal entity towering over the world, but one that challenged and reversed the values of the world, setting men on the path to dispossession. Through his identification with the Crucified Christ, Paul abandons the Greek logic of a God of order and thought, as well as the Jewish logic of a God of signs, miracles and almighty power. The liberated power that becomes his reference is that of agape.

Radiographic Studies of Three Cornstalk-paste Grand Christ Figures Identified in Spain: Cristo crucificado de Lerma (the Crucified Christ of Lerma , Burgos), Cristo de Santa María de Vitoria-Gasteiz (the Christ of Santa Maria of Vitoria- Gasteiz , Alava) and Cristo de la buena muerte de Gran Canaria (the Christ of the Good Death of Gran Canaria, Gran Canaria)

Scientific studies applied to cultural heritage provide essential information to carry out restoration processes of objects as well as to categorize and interpret them. Radiographic and video endoscopic studies of the Cristo crucificado de Lerma (Crucified Christ of Lerma, Burgos), the Cristo de Santa Maria de Vitoria-Gasteiz (Christ of Santa Maria de Vitoria-Gasteiz, Alava) and the Cristo de la buena muerte de Gran Canaria (Christ of the Good Death of Gran Canaria, Gran Canaria) ¾combined with a detailed comparative study of investigation data— show that these figures fall within the framework of a particular workshop called Taller de los Grandes Cristos (Workshop of Large Christs), figures made of cornstalk paste from the Mexican region of Oaxaca.

The Crucifixion Conundrum and the Santa Sabina Doors

The earliest extant public image of the crucifixion of Christ appears on a single relief panel on the early-fifth-century wooden doors of the Church of Santa Sabina on the Aventine Hill in Rome (figs. 1 and 2). General scholarly consensus dates the construction of the church to the pontificate of Pope Celestine I (422–433 c.e.) as stated in the surviving inscription on the church's interior west wall.1 Construction probably continued into the pontificate of Sixtus III (432–440 c.e.) when the church was formally consecrated.2 Although in the ensuing centuries the image of the Crucified Christ—the Crucifix—attained canonical status, scholars seeking precedents for Santa Sabina's crucifixion scene have failed to determine its pedigree satisfactorily within the Christian artistic tradition. We propose that broadening our understanding of artistic prototypes for the Santa Sabina crucifixion image to include both formal and theological elements allows for a more nuanced and promising investigation.

Erratum: The "New Creation," the Crucified and Risen Christ, and the Temple: A Pauline Audience for Mark

Erratum: The "New Creation," the Crucified and Risen Christ, and the Temple: A Pauline Audience for Mark

The "New Creation," the Crucified and Risen Christ, and the Temple: A Pauline Audience for Mark

Abstract In the wake of the debate on Gospel audiences, this article illustrates one way of engaging in an explicitly theological interpretation of a Gospel, constrained and enriched by canonical and historical considerations. Building on the arguments of scholars who see "new exodus/new creation" concepts implicitly underlying much of Mark, it asks how portions of this narrative (1:1–11, 15:33–16:8) might be heard if we construe the audience as having been shaped by Paul's theology of "new creation" that underlies 1 Corinthians. This interpretive move assumes that Mark is an attempt to articulate the significance of Jesus within a scriptural matrix, that is, within Isaiah's "conversation" with Genesis and Exodus. This 1 Corinthians audience is an intracanonical, hermeneutical construct intended to further Mark's attempt to articulate the significance of Jesus within a broader scriptural matrix. The reading of Mark that emerges contends that Jesus proleptically baptizes with the Spirit as he forges a new creation throughout the Gospel; at the crucifixion, the Spirit moves from Jesus into the temple (a microcosm of the old order/cosmos) to split the outer curtain signifying its end; and the Spirit continues Jesus' work by raising him from the dead as a microcosm of the new creation.

Raffaellino del Garbo and His World: Commissions, Patrons, Associates

This essay establishes new contexts for the career of the Florentine painter Raffaellino del Garbo (d. c. 1527-1528), through new documentary research. A contract drawn up on in 1502 reveals that Piero Corbinelli commissioned Raffaellino to paint an double-sided tabernacle near his villa at San Felice a Ema (lost). The original contract for Raffaellino's Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes reveals the identity of the individual who commissioned the painting on behalf of the convent, Don Innocenzo Riccialbani. Two unpublished sinopie for the Multiplication cast doubt on the recent attribution to Raffaellino of the St. Bernard with the Crucified Christ (Santa Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi), here identified as the work of Sperandio di Giovanni. Another contract records that in 1516 a friar of Santo Spirito, Fra' Raffaello da Fivizzano, commissioned Raffaellino to paint an Assumption of the Virgin with Sts. Anthony, John the Baptist, James, and Sigismund. This iconography, and clues in the contract itself, suggest that Raffaellino's Assumption was intended for the Augustinian church of San Giovanni Battista, Fivizzano (destroyed, with much of its art, by an earthquake in 1920). The new documentation furnishes new details about Raffaellino's use of varying names at different periods in his life - a practice that long led scholars to believe his works were actually painted by several different artists.

From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary (review)

Reviewed by: From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary Marsha L. Dutton From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary. By Rachel Fulton. (New York: Columbia University Press. 2002. Pp. xx, 676; 8 plates. $40.00.) The subject of this book—the origin and development of medieval European devotion to the crucified Christ and to his grieving mother—should make it indispensable to intellectual historians and to students of medieval Christianity. Its provocative and elegant argument about the reasons that that development took place when it did and the contribution it made to human feeling invite readers to join its author in interpretation and evaluation of the evidence. Rachel Fulton's clarity of thought and thoroughness of explication make her study as compelling as it is challenging; her graceful authorial voice, which combines scholarly authority with colloquial crispness, makes the book also unusually accessible. [End Page 107] Fulton, associate professor of history at the University of Chicago, explores and quotes extensively from the principal authors of doctrinal and devotional texts from the ninth through the thirteenth centuries. While the book adheres to the chronological and thematic outline suggested by the title, its structure embodies the two primary aspects of the question: the development of devotion to Christ ("Christus Patiens") and to his mother ("Maria Compatiens"). The first portion has three chapters ("History, Conversion, and the Saxon Christ," "Apocalypse, Reform, and the Suffering Savior," and "Praying to the Crucified Christ"); the second follows a brief introduction with five chapters ("Praying to the Mother of the Crucified Judge," "The Seal of the Mother Bride," "The Voice of my Beloved, Knocking," "Once upon a Time," and "Commoriens, Commortua, Consepulta"). These chapter titles signal the major themes of the book: language, instruction, and interpretation; disappointed millennial anticipation when Christ the Judge did not appear in 1033; Mary's dual roles as mother and bride; the role of story in creating relationship between believer/devotee and Christ and his mother, and the centuries-long movement from imitative propitiation of Christ the crucified judge to compassion for his suffering. A focus on the linguistic nature of the Incarnation runs as a golden thread through the book, whose first line enunciates the point: "For medieval Christians, the great mystery of the Incarnation was first and foremost linguistic: 'And the Word became flesh and lived among us' (John 1:14)" (p. xv). This is Fulton's principal subtext, that not only is medieval devotion to Christ and Mary revealed in language but that that language is imbricated with such devotion, that devotion translates doctrine, and that medieval devotion was understood to inscribe on the believer's flesh a corporeal memory of Christ's loving sacrifice. Finally Fulton identifies Christian devotion with the search to understand the story of the faith: "the exegete's art itself recapitulates the art of devotion; . . . the effort to become one in understanding with a text (Scripture, the Word of God) itself recapitulates the effort to become one with the object of devotion" (p. 468). In her study of the medieval growth of empathy within the narrative of the life and Passion of Jesus, Fulton relies on empathy as an essential tool. She begins the book with the story of her response to a crucifix in Salzburg: "a feeling of sweetness, and of sorrow, of longing to be closer to the beauty of the man depicted so dying . . ." (p. 1). She then enters her exploration of the past with a long paragraph rejecting the caution that denies scholars the ability to understand people of the past: "to refuse the interpretive leap into the past . . . is to presume that human beings of the historical past are (were) so irredeemably 'Other' that there is no possibility of empathy in our encounter with them other than of the mostly reductive kind . . ." (pp. 2–3). Fulton's insistence that it is not only possible to understand people of other times through shared human experience but vital to do so shapes the book. It is of course a method that would be perilous if employed by a less thorough [End Page 108] and disciplined scholar, one relying simply on personal instinct. It...

Paul and the Crucified Christ in Antioch: Maccabean Martyrdom and Galatians 1 and 2

Paul and the Crucified Christ in Antioch: Maccabean Martyrdom and Galatians 1 and 2