Christ on the Way to Calvary
Titian, 1560
The Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain
Visio Divina
Ask for the grace to see and receive from the Holy. Sit silently and contemplate the image for a few minutes.
What word or phrase comes to mind? What emotion arises?
Note the figures, faces, hands, feet, clothing. Is your eye drawn to something in the image? Stay with that observation. Or imagine yourself in or observing the scene, inventory your five senses.
Continue to sit quietly with this painting.
Consider the exchanged glance between Jesus and Simon. What emotions are conveyed? What might Jesus have felt or even said to Simon? The compassion of Simon, to help Jesus when he fell under the weight of the cross, was costly. The risk, the shared struggle, the leering and jeering of the crowds. What would you say to Jesus if you were helping him carry the cross?
Share with God your response to this scene. What grace do you need?
Carry this image in your mind through the day.
Ask and allow the Spirit to remind you of Jesus’s suffering and death as you tarry before Resurrection day arrives. The death of death lies just ahead. How do you respond while you wait for Easter morning?
- Titian portrays the exhausted Jesus receiving help from Simon of Cyrene who carries the cross with Christ. Christ’s hand rests on a stone signed with the artist’s name.
- Museo del Prado website, entry on Titian’s Christ on the Way to Calvary painting.
- Titian painted this same scene in another painting at the Prado. The painting is called Christ Carrying the Cross, created five years later. Click here for the Prado website description.
- Commentary, Christ Falls, on the Visual Commentary of Scripture website, by Andrew Casper.
- Article, Titian’s Christ Carrying the Cross, by Kelly Bagnadov.