A new Guest at Palazzo Cini… and what a guest! It is the painting Christ on the Cross, a masterpiece by Antoon van Dyck, dated 1627, on loan from the Royal Palace Museum of Genoa. This work of sublime grandeur — widely recognized by scholars as one of the most important Italian-period paintings by the renowned Flemish master — depicts the powerful body of Christ nailed to the cross, standing out starkly against a dark, cloud-laden sky that underscores the desolate solitude of his execution and death.
A cold light falls upon his naked body and the wide Baroque drapery that twists around his waist, as if stirred by the wind. He is still alive: his suffering face, streaked with blood, is turned upward. Blood also flows from the wounds in his wrists and feet. Faint rays of light encircle his head crowned with thorns. In the sky, one can glimpse the eclipse described by Luke in his Gospel.
The barren, rocky landscape surrounding the cross and fading into the darkness of the background evokes the dramatic dimension in which Christ’s profound emotional anguish is mirrored. The painting was acquired by Carlo Felice in 1821. Its attribution to the Flemish artist has never been questioned — on the contrary, some scholars believe it to be the only surviving autograph Crucifixion from Van Dyck’s Italian years.
