By Theresa Rézeau
In The Elevation of the Cross, Peter Paul Rubens does not present the crucifixion as a completed event. Instead, he situates the viewer within its execution. The cross is still being raised. The body of Jesus Christ is not yet fixed in stillness. The scene is active, physical, and unresolved.
This distinction matters.
The work itself is a triptych, composed of three panels that together form a continuous visual field. The central panel holds the primary action: the raising of the cross, rendered with physical force and compositional intensity. The flanking panels do not introduce separate narratives, but extend the same moment outward. Figures gather, respond, and participate in ways that broaden the scene beyond a single focal point. The event is not isolated. It unfolds across space, implicating multiple bodies and perspectives.
Most representations of the crucifixion emphasise aftermath: the suspended body, the silence of death, the moment of contemplation. Rubens instead focuses on process—on the mechanics of the act itself. The crucifixion is not simply something that has happened; it is something being carried out. The emphasis shifts from image to action.
The painting is structured around a powerful diagonal that cuts across the composition. This diagonal is not merely aesthetic. It produces instability. The viewer is drawn into a scene that resists equilibrium. The cross is heavy, the bodies strained, the balance uncertain. Nothing in the composition allows for passive viewing. The eye is compelled to follow movement, to register effort, to acknowledge weight.
At the centre of this movement is the body of Christ. It is neither idealised nor abstracted. It is extended, exposed, and physically contingent on the actions of others. The theological significance of the figure is inseparable from its material condition. The divine is not depicted as removed from the world, but fully subject to it.
This is where the painting intersects directly with the meaning of Good Friday.
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), The Elevation of the Cross(1610–11)
Triptych, oil on panel
Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp.
Public domain.
Good Friday is not only a commemoration of death. It is a confrontation with how that death occurs. The event is not distant or symbolic. It is enacted through human agency. The men in the painting are not peripheral figures. They are central to the image’s meaning. Their labour is what brings the crucifixion into being.
This introduces a critical theological tension.
The crucifixion is often framed as a necessary or redemptive event, but Rubens refuses to detach it from its immediate reality as an act of violence. The physical effort required to raise the cross makes visible the extent to which this event is grounded in human action. It is not an abstract sacrifice imposed from above. It is something executed, step by step, by individuals operating within a social and political structure.
The painting therefore resists any interpretation that would isolate the divine from the human. Instead, it insists on their entanglement.
This entanglement is what makes Good Friday difficult to approach conceptually. The day is defined by contradiction. It commemorates an act of execution while simultaneously affirming its significance within a redemptive framework. The tension between these two realities cannot be resolved by simplifying either one.
To call the day “good” is therefore not a moral judgement on the event itself. It does not imply that the suffering is desirable or justified in isolation. Rather, it reflects a retrospective understanding of what the event makes possible.
Good Friday is “good” because something profoundly meaningful came out of something deeply painful. This statement does not remove the pain. It situates meaning in relation to it.
Rubens’ painting helps clarify this relationship by refusing to collapse the event into a single register. The image operates simultaneously on multiple levels: physical, emotional, theological. The viewer is confronted with the brutality of the act, the visible strain of the bodies, and the unresolved nature of the moment. At the same time, the composition directs attention toward the central figure in a way that suggests significance beyond the immediate scene.
This duality is essential. If the painting were purely violent, it would not sustain theological reflection. If it were purely symbolic, it would lose its force. Its power lies in holding both dimensions together without allowing one to neutralise the other.
The figures surrounding Christ reinforce this complexity. They are not unified in their response. Some are engaged directly in the act, focused on the task at hand. Others are positioned as witnesses, their gestures indicating varying degrees of recognition, attention, or distance. The absence of a singular emotional response prevents the viewer from settling into a fixed interpretation.
Instead, the painting opens a space for reflection on participation. Who is responsible for the crucifixion? The painting does not isolate responsibility to a single figure or group. It presents a network of actions. The men lifting the cross are necessary to the event, but they are not depicted as uniquely culpable. They are part of a broader structure that enables the act to occur.
This has wider implications.
The crucifixion, as presented by Rubens, is not only a historical event but a model for understanding how violence is enacted collectively. It is carried out through coordinated effort, through roles that appear functional rather than overtly malicious, and through actions that may not be fully understood by those performing them.
This perspective complicates any attempt to distance oneself from the event. It challenges the viewer to consider not only the fact of the crucifixion, but the conditions that make such an act possible.
Within this framework, the meaning of Good Friday becomes more demanding.
It is not sufficient to recognise the event as significant. One must also confront the mechanisms through which it is realised. The painting does not allow the viewer to remain external to the scene. Its composition implicates the act of looking. The viewer is drawn into proximity with the action, positioned close enough to register detail, effort, and consequence.
This proximity is uncomfortable, but necessary.
Without it, the crucifixion risks becoming abstract—a symbol detached from its material reality. Rubens resists this abstraction by emphasising the physicality of the event. The ropes, the wood, and the tension in the bodies all serve to anchor the scene in concrete terms.
At the same time, the painting does not reduce the event to mere physicality. The centrality of Christ, the compositional focus, and the broader iconographic context all signal that something more is at stake. The event is both a specific act of execution and a moment of theological significance.
The relationship between these two dimensions is not resolved within the image. It is held in tension.
This tension is mirrored in the structure of Good Friday itself. The day exists between two poles: the violence of the crucifixion and the promise of the resurrection. It is neither fully defined by one nor the other. It is a transitional moment, characterised by uncertainty and unresolved meaning.
Rubens captures this transitional quality by depicting the crucifixion in progress. The event is not yet complete. The cross is still moving. The outcome is not yet visible within the frame of the painting.
This temporal positioning is significant. It aligns the viewer with a moment in which the meaning of the event has not yet been fully realised. The theological interpretation that defines Good Friday as “good” depends on what follows, but the painting withholds that future. It situates the viewer within the present of the act.
This creates a gap between perception and understanding. The viewer sees the violence, the effort, and the instability. The meaning that will later be attributed to the event is not yet apparent. This gap is where reflection occurs. It prevents immediate resolution and requires engagement with the complexity of the moment.
In this sense, Rubens’ painting functions as a visual analogue to the structure of Good Friday. It holds the viewer within a space where meaning is emerging but not yet fully formed.
The phrase “something profoundly meaningful came out of something deeply painful” captures this dynamic, but it must be understood carefully. The meaning does not negate the pain. It does not justify the violence in a simplistic way. Instead, it reframes the event within a broader temporal and theological horizon.
The painting contributes to this reframing by emphasising that the event is both contingent and significant. It is contingent because it depends on human action. It is significant because it becomes the site through which meaning is articulated.
This dual status prevents reduction. The crucifixion cannot be understood purely as an instance of human violence, nor can it be understood purely as a predetermined divine act. It exists at the intersection of these two frameworks.
Rubens’ emphasis on action foregrounds the human dimension. The theological interpretation of Good Friday introduces the dimension of meaning. The interaction between these two elements is what gives the event its enduring complexity.
For a contemporary viewer, this complexity remains relevant. The painting raises questions about how meaning is constructed in relation to suffering. It challenges the assumption that painful events are either meaningless or immediately redeemable. Instead, it suggests that meaning emerges through a process that is neither instantaneous nor straightforward.
This has broader implications beyond the specific context of Good Friday. It invites reflection on how individuals and societies interpret events that involve suffering, loss, or violence. The tendency to seek immediate resolution or to impose clear narratives of meaning can obscure the complexity of such events. Rubens’ painting resists this tendency by maintaining the tension between action and interpretation.
The crucifixion, as depicted here, is not yet a resolved symbol. It is an event in progress, open to multiple layers of understanding.
This openness is what allows Good Friday to retain its significance. It is not a day that offers easy answers. It does not provide immediate consolation. Instead, it confronts the viewer with a moment that demands careful consideration. The designation of the day as “good” is not self-evident. It requires engagement with the full complexity of the event.
Rubens’ painting supports this engagement by refusing to simplify the scene. It presents the crucifixion as an act that is both materially real and theologically charged. It invites the viewer to consider how these dimensions interact, without collapsing one into the other.
In Rubens’ triptych, the elevation of the cross becomes more than a physical act. The straining bodies that lift the wood also expose the scale of what is being enacted: not only an execution, but a moment in which human violence and theological meaning converge. The diagonal force of the composition destabilises the scene, drawing the eye upward while refusing resolution. Light cuts across the figures with clarity, isolating the body of Christ against a surrounding darkness that does not recede. The effect is not theatrical excess, but structural intensity. This is not a quiet martyrdom. It is a moment in which the divine is subjected to the full conditions of the human world, without mitigation.
Yet the painting does not remain within the logic of violence. What appears as defeat carries a different kind of significance when read within the broader theological framework to which Good Friday belongs. The act that exposes the extremity of human action also becomes the point through which meaning is later articulated. Rubens does not resolve this tension. He sustains it. The cross is still being raised, and in that unfinished motion, the viewer is held between two interpretations: one grounded in what is visible, the other in what is yet to be understood.
In doing so, it provides a framework for understanding Good Friday that is both grounded and expansive. Grounded, because it insists on the physical reality of the event. Expansive, because it opens that reality to broader questions of meaning.
The result is an image that does not resolve the tension at the heart of Good Friday, but sustains it. And it is within this sustained tension that the significance of the day becomes most apparent.
While Good Friday belongs to a specific theological tradition, the structure it reveals is not confined to it. The idea that something profoundly meaningful can emerge from something deeply painful is not unique to Christianity, but finds resonance across cultures, histories, and lived experience. What this image makes visible is not only a religious event, but a pattern: that meaning is often not given in advance, but formed through rupture, through action, and through the difficult work of recognition. In this sense, Good Friday does not ask for agreement as much as attention. It asks us to consider how we understand suffering, how we assign meaning to it, and how we live in relation to what we do not yet fully comprehend.
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