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Raphael Sanzio (Italian: Raffaello) (1483 - 1520)
Christ Falling on the Way to Calvary
Oil on panel transferred to canvas, 1516-1517
318 cm × 229 cm (125 in × 90 in)
Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain
Christ Falling on the Way to Calvary, also known as Sicilia's Spasimo, is a painting of the Italian High Renaissance master Raphael, circa 1516-1517. It is housed in the Museo del Prado of Madrid.
The painting was uted for the church of Santa Maria dello Spasimo in Palermo, partly by the school of Raphael. The church was dedicated to the grief and agony ('spasimo') of the Virgin when she witnessed the sufferings of Christ, and the true subject of Raphael's altarpiece is indeed the mutual gaze of Christ, stumbling beneath the weight of the Cross, and his distraught mother, who reaches out her arms in vain.
When the painting was being transported by sea to Sicily, it is supposed to have gone down with the ship, and to have drifted into the port of Genoa. Monks found it there and thought its appearance a miracle.
Philip IV, King of Spain, bought the painting in 1622. In 1813 Napoleon took it as booty to Paris, where it was moved to canvas. In 1822 the painting was given back to Spain.
As an altarpiece it is not the usual image of the Virgin and Christ child, but an episode from a narrative. It depicts Jesus on a road called cavalry and the moment when he slipped while carrying his cross to Golgotha and his mother suffers a spasm of agony, hence its is called “Lo Spasimo”. All the emotion of the painting is densely crammed into the foreground and the background is similar to that of a stage set with distant groups of people and crosses. The man on the left in the foreground is similar to a figure in Raphael’s painting “The Judgement of Soloman” in the stanze, except reversed. Simon of Serene lifts Christ’s cross momentarily and looks sternly at the guards. The four Mary’s are depicted on the right side of the painting and towering on either side of the composition are the guards.
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