Crucifixion is horribly violent – we must confront its reality head on

Glasgow theology students have been warned about brutal crucifixion images. But such paintings remind us of the grisly truth about death

Glasgow University is giving theology students what the Daily Mail calls “trigger warnings” about potentially upsetting images of the crucifixion. The theology department concedes that its course about Christ in cinema “contains graphic scenes of the crucifixion, and this is flagged up to students beforehand”. Given it includes Mel Gibson’s blood-spattered The Passion of the Christ, you can understand the anxiety (though the university tells us no students opted out); more recently, Martin Scorsese has featured underwater crucifixions in his new film Silence. Yet long before Jesus was dying on screen he was being nailed up in paintings and in sculpture.

One work that haunts me, and not in a good way, is a painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder that I chanced on a few years ago in the great Alte Pinakothek museum in Munich. Painted in 1503, it shows not only Christ but the two thieves who died beside him. At first sight it may not seem so sensational – except for a nasty spurt of blood out of Christ’s nailed feet. Then you notice that a single huge nail goes through both feet. Oh wait, this really is horrible. For the feet are bizarrely twisted together and shapeless, as if the nail has smashed bones and torn tendons in its violent riveting of flesh to wood.

Related: Jesus's tomb in Jerusalem exposed during conservation work

Continue reading...