Healing the Imagination: The Crucifix as Medicine

I am an art historian by trade, and recently, I had the opportunity to deliver an art history lecture at my church. I always relish these occasions, because they give me a chance to share my passion with a wider audience. They also, maybe surprisingly, help me with my own research. I’m deeply interested in how art can impact people’s daily lives and spiritual states, and it’s great to get firsthand accounts from “regular people.”

The general topic of my lecture was “visual healing,” and the specific focus of our discussion was the Christian crucifix – that is, the cross bearing the crucified body of Jesus. The crucifix is a potent cultural icon that has been appropriated by artists as diverse as the modernist Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Jewish Marc Chagall and the rapper Kanye West. But for a lot of people, the crucifix can be hard to look at – it shows an innocent victim of execution, after all, just at the point of his expiration. For that latter reason, perhaps, most churches today omit the traditional crucifix from their worship spaces: it evokes too much pain and sadness. Its emphasis is too dark.

In this regard, interestingly, modern churches are like the earliest ones: the very first Christians also opted against crucifixion imagery. The early Christian catacombs, for example, are bereft of Crucifixion narratives, as are the earliest above-ground basilicas. The first public, church-sanctioned image of the Crucifixion, it is believed, can be found on the large wooden door of the 5th-century Santa Sabina church in Rome, Italy. But the door has 18 panels, and the crucifixion scene occupies one of the smallest, relegated to the extreme upper left. In other words, it is practically invisible. Most prominent, by contrast, are images of Moses leading the Jews out of captivity. It makes sense that narratives of collective liberation would take pride of place among a people newly released from persecution. For Christians in the early centuries, perhaps, the brutal practice of crucifixion was still too raw in the collective memory, and the blood of the martyrs was still too fresh.

Panel from the door of Santa Sabina church, Rome, 5^th century.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crucifixion-Christ-Church-Santa-Sabina-Rome-716123.jpg

Three hundred years later, however, the state-sanctioned practice of crucifixion was a distant memory, and Christianity itself had become the indispensable glue holding European society together. In this context, the life-sized, three-dimensional crucifix emerged – albeit in a form surprising to modern eyes. The so-called “Holy Face of Lucca,” named for the striking realism of its visage (thought to be modeled on Christ himself)¹, is a 7-foot-tall effigy of a crucified king. Here, the ancient Roman method of execution is combined with an apocalyptic image of imperturbable, eternal majesty – Christ’s second coming. It is a paradoxical object, and as far as we know, utterly unique. No other crucifix of this combined antiquity, majesty and scale has yet been found.

The “Holy Face” of Lucca, ca. 800
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Face_of_Lucca#/media/File:Volto_Santo_de_Lucca.JPG

A crucifix more congenial to our modern understanding of the term, and perhaps the first of its kind, is the so-called Gero Cross of Cologne Cathedral, in Germany. Here, after about 900 years of Christian visual-cultural development, an artist landed on the sagging, life-sized, loin-clothed form recognized from millions of prayer cards and necklaces, not to mention Hollywood movies. And indeed, the Gero cross is a marvelous prototype worth emulating. It delineates Christ’s dead body with flowing lines at once elegant and poignantly realistic. Its humbly drooping head and vulnerable, delicate limbs have effectively stirred centuries of empathetic reactions and pierced millions of hearts.

The Gero Cross, ca. 900
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gero_Cross#/media/File:Gerokreuz_full_20050903.jpg

But how can such things be healing?

In my church presentation, audience members suggested multiple ways. First, as one participant said, the Crucifix gives us permission to accept our woundedness, for even God Himself was wounded. Another participant explained how the Crucifix helps him internalize Christ’s assumption of our sins, making him feel a sense of liberation. Seeing Jesus hang on the cross can bring home for us the reality, meaning and effectiveness of Christ’s sacrifice. We can let go of our struggles and give them to Jesus, who indeed is already bearing them with compassion and grace. The crucifix brings all this home.

In my church presentation, we also discussed how images of the crucified Christ can be socially healing. The so-called “black” Christ of Esquipulas, Guatemala, for example, helped Guatemala’s first indigenous Christians recognize Christ’s ability to transcend racial and cultural barriers. Tradition holds that this large sculpture, featuring a Jesus with dark skin, was miraculously found in a cave sacred to the local people. Recent scholarship, meanwhile, suggests that the sculpture was made by an Antiguan-Portuguese artist. Regardless, the Christ of Esquipulas has become a major focus of Guatemalan identity and culture, generating a host of local devotions, traditions, and celebrations and serving as an anchor for artistic improvisation. This unlikely crucifix has helped Guatemalan Christians “own” their faith in a unique and powerful way.

The “Black Christ of Esquipulas,” Antigua/Guatemala, ca. 1600
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Christ_of_Esquipulas#/media/File:Cristo_negro_de_Esquipulas.jpg

Meanwhile, as the Christ of Esquipulas was unveiled in Guatemala, another crucifix was making an impact in southern France. This monumental painted image is situated at the center of Matthias Grunewald’s enormous Isenheim Altarpiece, and its visceral punch still captures imaginations today. Here, a pock-marked, green-hued, emaciated Christ stiffens in the throes of rigor mortis. Nearby, his gentle mother faints at the sight. The Isenheim Altarpiece is renowned for being one of the most uncompromising images of cruel death in all of art history. And how did it visually heal? As historians recount, this heart-rending image was situated in the midst of a hospital specializing in skin diseases. The infirm could look upon it and internalize the depth of Christ’s empathy with them, along with His willingness to help bear their suffering.

Matthias Grunewald, The Isenheim Altarpiece, 1516
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isenheim_Altarpiece#/media/File:Chapel_of_Unterlinden_Museum_with_Isenheim_altarpiece.jpg

Sometimes, images like the ones discussed above could be literally, physically healing: there are stories, for example, of miraculous healings before the Christ of Esquipulas. But more often, these images healed – and continue to heal – the emotions and the imagination, helping viewers connect visually, sensually and physically with the God who bears their sorrows.

Artworks like the Isenheim Altarpiece, the Gero Cross and the Christ of Esquipulas are potent counterpoints to the reductive, exploitative, invasive and manipulative imagery flickering from today’s phones and television screens. They are not loud and demanding, but solemn and silent. They do not invade our private space, but rather make us come out – to the church, the shrine, the chapel – to encounter something sacred and “other.” They do not make false, comfortable promises, but rather proclaim difficult, uncompromising truths. They do not “sell” pleasure, but rather force us to be honest about pain.

During this Lenten season, I am making it a practice to avoid digital imagery of all kinds. Instead, I will seek embodied experiences of truthful themes rendered by loving human hands. Central to this, of course, will be my attendance at church, among living images of God Himself, who will gather around the Body and Blood of Jesus in the form of the Eucharist. And Lord willing, I will also visit some of my favorite artworks, made by artists of consummate skill, empathetically invested in subjects whose truth they passionately affirmed. By such means, I think, past and present can be connected, language can be transcended, and the seemingly infinite gap between individuals can be spanned. Literate and illiterate, Guatemalan and French, ancient and modern, all God’s children can be united, their estrangements healed, at the foot of the cross.

1. Tradition held that this sculpture was made by the New Testament figure Nicodemus, who had seen Christ personally. Thus medieval Christians believed the sculpture to date from the time of Christ. Carbon dating places it in the 700s AD.