Christ on the Cross (c. 1600–1610): Art, History and Details

Christ on the Cross (c. 1600–1610) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is El Greco (Spanish, 1541–1614).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

El Greco (Spanish for "the Greek") was trained on his native island, Crete, as a painter of small-scale devotional images (icons). In the late 1560s he moved first to Venice, where he may have worked with Tintoretto (1518-1594), and then to Rome. Finally, he settled in Toledo, Spain. Tintoretto's influence is visible here in the colors and in the elongated figural proportions. The graphic depiction of blood, however, may reflect the Spanish interest in Christ's sufferings as a subject for meditation.

Object facts

• Title: Christ on the Cross
• Date: c. 1600–1610
• Creator attribution: El Greco (Spanish, 1541–1614)
• Culture: Spain
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 221 x 144 x 10 cm (87 x 56 11/16 x 3 15/16 in.); Unframed: 193 x 116 cm (76 x 45 11/16 in.)
• Collection: P - Spanish before 1800
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1952.222

Collection credit

Gift of the Hanna Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Madrid. Paseo por Madrid; ó, Guia del Forastero en la Corte. Obra ... precedida de un compendio de la historia de Madrid, etc. 1815.
• Cossío, Manuel B. El Greco. Madrid: V. Suárez, 1908.
• Sociedad Española de Amigos del Arte, Madrid. Exposición del antiguo Madrid; catálogo general ilustrado. Madrid: Gráficas reunidas, s. a, 1926.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.