Peter Paul Rubens, The Elevation of the Cross (1610–1611), depicting Christ being raised on the cross as figures strain beneath him.

In Peter Paul Rubens’s The Elevation of the Cross, Jesus Christ has already been nailed to the wood, but the Crucifixion has not reached the image we know so well. Men bend beneath its weight, others pull from above, and the execution is still being physically made possible.

Rubens could have shown Christ already suspended above the crowd. Instead, he chose the labour required to put him there.

 

The full essay continues in the Membership Archive, where The Elevation of the Cross becomes a reflection on suffering, complicity and the human hands that make violence possible.
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