Sometimes the Study Is Better Than the Painting
During my recent visit to the Vatican Museum, I came across a Salvador Dali painting that struck me as familiar even though I had never seen it before. Called Crocifisso, the painting depicts the crucifixion with the notable absence of the cross. 
Two other figures brandishing weapons employed during the Passion appear in the somber and minimalistic background. The figure on the left holds the rod struck Jesus – the same rod later placed mockingly in His hand as a scepter, while the mounted figure on the right brandishes the lance that pierced Jesus.
Despite the presence of these weapons, Jesus’s body shows no signs of injury or abuse. The nail marks on the hands and feet are absent, as is the crown of thorns. Jesus is turned away from the viewer, leaving His face unseen.
The painting is housed in one of the only parts of the Vatican Museum that does not perpetually throng with teeming masses of people, which allowed me to study the image for a while before moving on.
In that brief time, I concluded that I liked Dali’s representation of an unmutilated Christ crucified in empty space because the absence of the cross invited me to think and perceive the crucifixion from entirely new and unexplored perspectives. At the same time, I could not shake the feeling that I had seen this image somewhere before.
Shortly after arriving home, I discovered the source of my familiarity with Crocifisso. The image is a study for Dali’s famous Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus), which I had seen more than a decade ago in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
While viewing Crucifixion, I learned that Dali had painted the work under the sway of something he referred to as nuclear mysticism and that he chose to replace the cross with a four-dimensional geometic structure known as a tesseract or (hypercube) to symbolize the transcendent nature of God. I also discovered that Dali incorporated his wife into the painting as Mary Magdelene and planted five images of his wife in Christ’s left knee and five images of himself in His right knee.
I distinctly remember not liking Dali’s Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) all that much, which makes my esteem for the minimalistic study for that painting all the more puzzling.
Two other figures brandishing weapons employed during the Passion appear in the somber and minimalistic background. The figure on the left holds the rod struck Jesus – the same rod later placed mockingly in His hand as a scepter, while the mounted figure on the right brandishes the lance that pierced Jesus.Despite the presence of these weapons, Jesus’s body shows no signs of injury or abuse. The nail marks on the hands and feet are absent, as is the crown of thorns. Jesus is turned away from the viewer, leaving His face unseen.
The painting is housed in one of the only parts of the Vatican Museum that does not perpetually throng with teeming masses of people, which allowed me to study the image for a while before moving on.
In that brief time, I concluded that I liked Dali’s representation of an unmutilated Christ crucified in empty space because the absence of the cross invited me to think and perceive the crucifixion from entirely new and unexplored perspectives. At the same time, I could not shake the feeling that I had seen this image somewhere before.
Shortly after arriving home, I discovered the source of my familiarity with Crocifisso. The image is a study for Dali’s famous Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus), which I had seen more than a decade ago in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
While viewing Crucifixion, I learned that Dali had painted the work under the sway of something he referred to as nuclear mysticism and that he chose to replace the cross with a four-dimensional geometic structure known as a tesseract or (hypercube) to symbolize the transcendent nature of God. I also discovered that Dali incorporated his wife into the painting as Mary Magdelene and planted five images of his wife in Christ’s left knee and five images of himself in His right knee.I distinctly remember not liking Dali’s Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) all that much, which makes my esteem for the minimalistic study for that painting all the more puzzling.
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