Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti)
The Crucifixion

Circa 1565
Church of Santa Maria del Rosario ("The Gesuati"), Venice, Italy

The artist devotes all the light and color to the Virgin Mary and her companions. Her faint is not in scripture but is from a vision received by St. Bridget of Sweden (Prophecies and Revelations, IV, lxx). The bald man with the characteristic short, square beard is St. Peter. St. John leans into the frame at the lower right.

The one person paying attention to Jesus is the man behind John's head. He is pointing at Jesus, so he could be the centurion of Matthew 27:54 who said, "Truly this was the Son of God," although his clothing does not seem military.

As in most Crucifixion images of this century and after, Jesus wears a loosely tied perizoma rather than the skirt or colobium of earlier eras. This too may be due to Bridget's Revelations, which say Jesus "took off his clothes when ordered but covered his private parts with a small cloth. He proceeded to tie it on as though it gave him some consolation to do so" (ibid.).

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Photographed at the church by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.