Christ Succumbs to the Weight of the Cross (The Bearing of the Cross)

Author: Klazina Botke

This is a scene from the Passion when Christ, dragged forward by a Roman soldier, has just succumbed to the weight of the Cross. On his knees and leaning on a rock, he looks over his shoulder at a man who urges him to go on. This figure is followed by Simon of Cyrene, a bystander who was compelled to help Christ carry the Cross, and Roman soldiers on horseback talking together. On the left in the foreground, at the side of the road, the Virgin, overcome by emotion, is supported by two women. Four more women stand behind her. Golgotha, where the crosses for the two thieves have already been erected, rises in the landscape in the background.

This specific imagery, with the fallen Christ leaning on a rock, has its origins in German art at the end of the fifteenth and early sixteenth century. We see it in Albrecht Dürer’s (1471-1528) famous woodcut Christ Carrying the Cross (1498/1499 and/or 1511) in the Large Passion series, in which St Veronica hands him a cloth to wipe the sweat from his face.^[1] This print was popular with Italian artists, among them Raphael (1482-1520), who used the same compositional element in his celebrated painting Lo Spasimo of 1515-16.^[2] The scene type acquired more followers through the print that Agostino Veneziano (c.1490-c.1540) made after the painting in 1517.^[3]

The Roman soldier dragging Christ forward has been borrowed in part from Raphael’s composition, as has the standard-bearer on horseback. The figure of Christ, however, seems to have been based on Martin Schöngauer’s (c.1450/1453-1491) famous engraving Christ Carrying the Cross (c.1470-90).^[4] This print often served as an example for Italian artists.^[5] Christ’s conspicuous left foot, toes pressed down on the ground, and the rock he leans on are repeated in our study, but here Christ looks back instead of at the viewer. The Rotterdam sheet appears to be a combination of the artist’s own invention and reinterpretation of elements adopted from the aforementioned prints.

In 1967 Ballarin attributed the study to the Brescian artist Girolamo Romani (Romanino),^[6] and there certainly are influences from Northern European art in his work. Moreover, the loose touches and swift hatching are characteristic of his pen-and-ink studies. There are stylistic similarities in a drawing (c.1525) of his in Budapest, although the handling of line is a little livelier.^[7] These characteristics make an attribution to Romanino’s workshop or circle the most likely.^[8]

There are several studies in pen and ink on the verso of the sheet, but it is dominated by a horse performing a levade. The rearing animal was set down in a few firm lines and is unmistakably by another, earlier hand than the drawings around it. The focus here is not on the modelling of the horse, but on the rendition of the decorative harness and saddle. For this reason, it is very possible that the sheet came from a model book. The horse’s head alongside would have been copied later, and three other studies added.^[9] Since the latter have been cropped, the sheet must originally have been larger.