Christ Carrying the Cross (El Greco)

Christ, crowned with thorns, wraps both hands around the cross and lifts his streaming eyes to heaven - not a scene of the road to Calvary but a close, half-length image made for prayer. El Greco strips away the jeering crowd and the landscape, leaving only the suffering face and the embraced wood against a stormy sky. The tears, the parted lips, the long elegant fingers are pure El Greco, an icon of willing sacrifice meant to be met one to one. He repeated the devotional formula many times for Toledo's faithful.