
Christ Bearing the Cross, with a Dominican Friar
Christ looks back over the cross at a tiny Dominican friar kneeling in the corner, the patron drawn into the road to Calvary.

Christ looks back over the cross at a tiny Dominican friar kneeling in the corner, the patron drawn into the road to Calvary.

Christ in vivid red is hauled by a rope through the gate of a white, many-towered Jerusalem while children scamper at the edge.

Lotto crops the Passion down to one tear-streaked head at the surface, with soldiers' hands coming in from the edges of the frame.

El Greco stripped out the crowd and the road and left the face and the embraced wood, a formula he repeated many times for Toledo.

Christ turns back toward his mother as she swoons, and legend has it the painting was nearly lost in a shipwreck on its way to Palermo.

A crush of leering faces fills every inch, and Christ moves through the middle of it with his eyes shut.