Giovanni Bellini
Christ on the Cross

The artist painted this painting, which is around 80 centimetres high and almost 50 centimetres wide, with oil on wood. The panel is owned by the Banca Popolare in Vicenza, Italy. 

The crucified Jesus is depicted in front of a hilly landscape with a cityscape.

The longitudinal bar of the even light brown cross divides the painting into two halves. It stretches from the lower to almost the upper edge of the picture. At the upper end of the longitudinal bar is a small plaque that reads "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" in Greek, Hebrew and Latin. 

The crossbeam runs very high up in the picture. The feet of the crucified man are roughly in the centre of the picture. A white cloth is wrapped around his loins. The ribs protrude from the slender upper body. The head is tilted slightly to the right, the eyes are closed. The lower half of his face is in shadow. Jesus has shoulder-length wavy hair and a short full beard. His head is surrounded by a wreath of thorns, above which shines a golden halo. 

The wounds around the nails in the hands and feet are relatively small, the few traces of blood appear pale red. The wound in the right chest area is also rather inconspicuous. 

Five human skulls lie side by side on the stony ground at the foot of the cross on the right. On the left, a lizard crawls over a rock in front of a gravestone with a Hebrew inscription. In the dark green-grey landscape behind it, further gravestones stand between bare trees. A small white dove sits on a branch in the centre of the left edge of the picture. Three laurel shoots grow up from a slender trunk running parallel to the left edge of the picture. Their greenery extends across the upper quarter of the left half of the picture. On the horizon, embedded in the hilly landscape, there is a farmstead with a mill and a town made of light-coloured stone, with towers and roofs of different colours, rising into the blue, slightly cloudy sky.

Christ on the cross – one of the key subjects in Christian art. But how does Giovanni Bellini configure this topos of art history?

He places the monumental cross right on the edge of the painting, practically encroaching on the viewer's space. And the massive wooden cross extends across the entire height of the panel, blocking access to the picture space, as it were. 

While Carpaccio is keen to take viewers on a journey through the narrative of his paintings, Giovanni Bellini bases his work on a completely different concept. His composition doesn't invite viewers to explore a half-imaginary, half-realistic space – it invites them to meditate. The neatly arranged skulls lying on the rocky ground at the foot of the cross allude to transience and to Adam's original sin, which, according to the Christian faith, was expunged by Christ's sacrificial death. Behind the cross, there are a few leafless trees; but only a single branch, on the far left of the picture, has formed a new crown – a symbolic reference to the replacement of the Old Covenant (in other words Judaism) by the emergence of Christianity. 

In the background, on the left of the cross, there are two distinctive buildings from the city of Vicenza: the cathedral and the Torre Bissara, one of the city's tallest towers, built by the Bissari family. The complex also includes the cathedral of Ancona and what is presumably the bell tower of Santa Fosca in Venice.

Although the landscape and the city in the background are quite realistic, the painting doesn't lend itself to a narrative approach. Giovanni Bellini shows us the death on the cross, and we're meant to reflect on it as we look at the painting. He gives us no guidance on how to view his work, but rather invites us to engage in religious meditation on the act of salvation portrayed in the painting.

Here you see Christ on the cross. Giovanni Bellini paints the cross right in front. It takes up the whole picture, almost as if it were blocking the way. While there is often a lot to discover in Carpaccio's paintings, Giovanni Bellini follows a completely different plan. Bellini paints his pictures to make people pause and reflect on their faith. The skulls under the cross represent transience and Adam's original sin. According to Christian belief, people are redeemed from original sin through the death of Jesus on the cross.

Behind the cross there are a few bare trees, only on the left side are new leaves growing on a branch. The fresh leaves represent the new beginning with the emergence of Christianity.

In the background you can see two buildings of the city of Vicenza: the cathedral and a tall tower. You can also see the cathedral of Ancona and the bell tower of the church of Santa Fosca in Venice.