The drama of the Crucifixion has been a recurring theme for artists and composers for centuries, writes Eileen Battersby
Emaciated and stained with his blood and sweat, a man hangs from a wooden cross. Nails have been driven through his hands. A crown of thorns has been forced onto his head. His flesh is livid. He is dying, or perhaps he is already dead. At his feet, a weeping woman laments. It is his mother. Their agony is one of the most dramatic episodes in human history; it is, according to Christian ritual, atonement for the sins of mankind.
The image of Christ's brutal death has inspired artists throughout the centuries and the crucifixion is central to all Christian art. Even should the sun shine on this most solemn of days, Good Friday creates its own muted tone and many composers have captured the appalling beauty of a mother's sorrow. Somehow the sky will seem to darken, and many people will pause and consider, whether with certainty or doubt, and they may experience the communal guilt of a debt unpaid.
About 1512, the great German Renaissance artist, Mathis Grünewald (circa 1465-1528) completed the central panel of the Isenheim Altarpiece for what was a leprosy hospital, and the disease is reflected in the colouring of Christ's skin. The Europe of Grünewald's life was frequently swept by outbreaks of the Black Death; plague was a fact of daily life and he would die of it in Halle, soon after fleeing Frankfurt.
His altarpiece has been acclaimed as the final masterpiece of the Middle Ages and Grünewald's merciless depiction of Christ's physical suffering, from his torn head, parched lips and oozing side, to his twisted broken feet, represents the first attempt to convey the reality of his dying. Prior to this, beauty invariably countered realism. An earlier artist, Italian Andrea Mantegna (circa 1431-1506) allowed the formal compositional grace of his version of the Crucifixion to overshadow the horror.
But Grünewald, who after centuries of neglect would influence many 20th century German expressionists, including Otto Dix, preferred realism. In his final representation of the Crucifixion, completed about 1525, the tormented Christ is huge. Grünewald was a religious man, who only painted sacred subjects and left no known pupils or followers. God, not man, preoccupied him.
Whereas Albrecht Dürer, with whom he was friendly, looked to the wider world of the Renaissance, Grünewald, who was also a gifted hydraulic engineer, remained concerned with his spiritual life. Both men died in the same year, 1528.
The Isenheim Altarpiece has an elaborately complex design, incorporating statues of saints as well as panels, including a double set of folding wings which open and close, revealing and concealing, according to the church year, various episodes of Christ's life. Most of the other panels, such as the Annunciation and the Resurrection, testify to his expressive, vibrant use of colour. But his Crucifixion is dark and eerie, the background is empty. It is as if the world has closed down.
Within a few years of Grünewald's death, a child was born in Crete in 1541 and grew to show artistic promise. By the 1570s, having studied in Venice and Rome, El Greco had settled in Toledo and he became synonymous with religious art, although he also painted portraits.
The paintersof Europe have left a rich social history, a visual narrative; the earthy power of kings and merchants is well represented, alongside religious themes. The passage of the Crucifixion story in Irish art has been a long and constant one. "The Crucifixion, being a central theme of Christian thought," writes archaeologist and art historian Peter Harbison in the introduction to The Crucifixion in Irish Art, "is the only religious event or scene that has been represented in Irish art in virtually every century from the year 800 down to the present day."
He has assembled a thoughtful selection of 50 contrasting examples, ranging from tomb panels and figures carved on a high cross, to the 20th century stained-glass windows of Harry Clarke and Evie Hone, and argues that prior to the ninth century, the Irish artist had been drawn to the abstract and the stylised. The earliest representation of the human figure in a natural form can be seen on the surviving high crosses. The crucified Christ appears on the west face of Muiredach's Cross at Monasterboice, Co Louth.
It is interesting to contrast the approach adopted by the craftsmen who carved the high crosses with the more fantastical style perfected by the monks in their richly decorated illuminated manuscripts. But then, the illustrations served as decoration, not narrative. Harbison notes "the Celtic love of stylisation and geometrical decoration". But the emergence of the craftsmen who made the high crosses represents not only the beginning of an Irish sculptural tradition, itself important in the context of European art, but it is also evidence of changing artistic attitudes towards depicting the human form.
Among the examples selected by Harbison is the cross at Dysert O'Dea in Co Clare. Dating from the 12th century, the Christ figure, although depicted with arms outstretched and clad in a long robe, appears more triumphant than defeated. In the south transept of St Mary's Protestant Cathedral in Tuam, Co Galway, now stands the Market Cross, which until 1992 occupied the centre of the town. This cross is composed of two segments. The head, dating from the 1150s, depicts a crucified Christ, but one wearing a king's crown instead of a ring of thorns.
Above the doorway of the late 12th century round tower at Donaghmore, Co Meath, a simple crucifixion figure has been carved. On one flat stone the upper body has been depicted, while the legs, on the keystone of the arch of the window, are narrow and twisted. A far more sophisticated rendition is to be found on a Gothic tombstone standing in St Columba's Church of Ireland, in Kells, which notes a change in the iconography.
"Instead of Christ's two feet being side by side and nailed separately to the cross," notes Harbison, "they are placed one above the other and pierced with a single nail." The figures on the tombstone suggest it is of Norman origin and it is believed to be one of the earliest identifiable representations of the Crucifixion on an Irish tombstone.
Metal workers also depicted the Crucifixion on shrines and bronze plaques. The Leabhar Breac, or Speckled Book, now housed in the Royal Irish Academy but written in Co Galway between 1408 and 1411, chronicles the birth, life, passion and resurrection of Christ. According to Harbison, this great manuscript contains the only representation of the crucified Christ to be found in the later medieval texts. At the side of the Dublin-Navan road stands a wayside cross dating from the later 15th century. On it, the crucified Christ appears more peaceful than tormented.
A far more primitive wayside crucifixion cross carved in granite is St Valery's cross at Fassaroe, Co Wicklow. Dating from the mid-17th century is the White Cross at Athcarne, Co Meath, an example of sculpture rather than stone carving. It is an unusual work. The short crossbar of the cross creates the impression that Christ's arms reach skywards, above his head, while the depiction of the feet, shown side by side, rather than one on top of the other - indicating the use of one nail - returns to the pre-Gothic style.
There is a particularly gruesome late-16th century stone crucifix built into the north wall of the Catholic church in Johnstown, Co Kilkenny. A bizarre sense of movement is conveyed, suggesting real torment. Surreal peace and destiny fulfilled is the mood of Mainie Jellett's The Ninth Hour (1941), a wartime oil executed on a panel, housed in the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin.
Harry Clarke's famous The Crucifixion and the Adoration of the Cross, dating from 1920, is a formal and elegant narrative in rich purples, blues and reds spanning three vertical lights. Visual artists across the centuries have considered the story of one man's death on a wooden cross and have made images that stay in the mind.
Forall the powerof the visual image, the life blood of Passion week is the music of Bach. His Passions - reserving his celebratory Oster Oratorium for Easter Sunday - add to the legacy established by earlier masters, such as Palestrina, Lassus, Victoria, Monteverdi and Scarlatti, who were inspired in turn by the Passion week, its traditions and rituals.
A century before the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach, the Spanish composer Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611) published Officium, his music for Holy Week. This is a Renaissance sound and it is one of the most complete cycles of music for Holy Week by a single composer and it is probably the most cohesive work of Renaissance polyphony. Victoria's subtle, melancholic and elegant contribution surpasses even that of his great peers, Lassus and Palestrina.
His set of 18 Responsories for Tenebrae are particularly appropriate for today and tomorrow, Holy Saturday. Victoria was a quiet man. Having excelled as a chorister, he was patronised by Philip II, and sent to Rome. He knew Palestrina. For all his success in Rome, Victoria yearned to return to Spain and did.
Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707), master organist and composer, so inspired an admirer, one JS Bach, that he famously once walked 200 miles to Lübeck to visit him. Buxtehude's Memra Jesu nostri patientis sanctissima (Most Holy Members of the Body of our Suffering Jesus) is a cycle of seven cantatas, each addressed to a different part of the crucified Christ's body. The listener will be struck by the long instrumental passages.
There is also, of course, the lingering influence of the early German master Heinrich Schütz, born exactly a century before Bach. All roads led to Bach and it is his Passions, that of St John (1724) and the majestic St Matthew Passion (1727), with its glorious arias, which have come to dominate Passion music. Yet, it is interesting to also recall Scarlatti's graceful treatment of St John Passion, which is more in the tradition of Monteverdi's operas than of Bach's masterworks.
A man fulfils his destiny and obeys his father. The death is brutal but inspiring. Christian man continues to contemplate the privilege and the debt and the mystery. Is it wonderful or shocking, or probably both? Western artists have created a glorious legacy by drawing on this drama. A mother weeps for her son. A young Italian composer, Giovanni Pergolesi, was drawn to the mother's suffering. His response, Stabat Mater, arranged in 12 sections, was his final work completed in 1736, the year of his death, aged 26. It has remained the definitive Stabat Mater and caused Rossini to initially refuse a commission in 1831, simply because he felt Pergolesi's version could not be bettered. For all the rich flourish of his subsequent treatment, Rossini was right.
From the Golden Age of early English music, as pioneered by John Taverner, Christopher Tye and Thomas Tallis, to the European Renaissance and the early Italian Baroque composers, who played a part in shaping God's musician, JS Bach, and on to Mozart's Requiem and Haydn's Die Sieben Letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze, there are musical riches to suit the mood of this symbolic day, a good day to die on, a fine day to be born on, as Beckett liked to remark.
Pergolesi's eloquent Stabat Mater, one of the most influential works in musical history, articulates a mother's grief and could open a door for many engaged in a vigil of faith.
The Crucifixion in Irish Art, by Peter Harbison, is published by Columba Press, €18.99. Among the best recordings of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater is the Academy of Ancient Music's version, conducted by Christopher Hogwood, and featuring soprano Emma Kirkby and countertenor James Bowman on Decca (1989)
