The Great Art Explained - Rubens: The Elevation of the Cross

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Art Hour of Literary Tales. I'm your host, Paul Kraus, and in this episode, as we continue an examination and understanding of the great paintings of Peter Paul Rubens, we now turn to his grandest and most sublime of specifically biblical art, the Elevation of the Cross, as we are met with a grand painting depicting the culminating moment of the Passion of Christ. In the midst of the Counter-Reformation, where the doctrines of the Eucharist were being questioned by Reformed Protestants and the Eucharistic Wars were being waged, Rubens's painting is a powerful reminder that Christ is not some spiritual entity, but that his bodily sacrifice is the moment of salvation, and echoing the Gospel according to St. John, whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. Christ's bodily sacrifice as he is raised up on the cross is the center of the painting, a subtle but powerful reminder that it was Christ's physical presence and sacrifice that wrought salvation. The physicality of Christ is the heart of the painting and the heart of the specifically Catholic doctrine of salvation. God came and dwelt among humans in the flesh, joining us in our weakness and frailty so as to beautify us and grant us the path toward divinization. In the lifting of Christ on the cross, we are also struck by the strong men and soldiers that surround him and aid in the lifting of the cross to its place. Rubens here is trying to communicate to us the brutality of the crucifixion of Christ. Weaklings did not put Christ to death. It was the forceful strength of the fallen world, as you can see, soldiers, armies, and brutish force, libido dominandi, the lust to dominate, as St. Augustine said, that brought about this desecration and death of the holy innocent. Off to the right-hand side of the painting, you can also see the mocking power of the Roman Empire, who are also preparing the crucifixion of the two thieves. Like the best of Rubens's paintings, the elevation of Christ on the cross is filled with action, activity. The painted figures are not moving as we move, yet we cannot help but feel the movement of the peace, the passions it induces, the physicality of the transitions of light and darkness, the weeping and gleeful laments, and the mocking of those witnessing the events. Again, the totality of the human condition and human life is captured for us in this painting. The empty cross loses all the passion and pathology that the crucifixion of Christ entails. Against this stripping of the human heart and its passions in the most central event of Christian consciousness and identity, Rubens's painting restores. It is an attempt to recapture and reconfigure and to symbolize and signify for us the heart of the human condition and the heart of Jesus Christ as the central message that the painting is trying to communicate. This was not some passionless, purely spiritual event. It was physical, it was brutal, and it was a passionate event for all involved. In the bottom left-hand corner of the painting, we see a lamenting Mary Magdalene, who keeps her eyes focused on Christ. Christ, however, is gazing upward. In that powerful moment captured in the Gospel of Luke, when Christ, being crucified, pleads with his Father, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Originally, the painting included additional pieces above it with an image of God the Father. Taken in totality, then, Mary Magdalene, symbolizing the faithful, Christ, and God the Father, though we have lost that part of the painting, are one. They are united. The eyes of Mary Magdalene connect with the eyes of Christ, who connect to God the Father. And in this unity, in this horrific and brutal moment, unity, not disunity, is what is achieved in the moment of sacrificial salvation. God the Father, Christ the Son, the faithful, empowered by the Holy Spirit, are completely united in this moment of sacrificial salvation, the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ. We, too, are drawn into that unity, not as disinterested observers, but as participants in the drama unfolding before our very eyes. United in this dramatic event, beside Mary Magdalene, are St. John and the Virgin Mary. St. John is comforting Mary, behold your mother, as they lock hands together in a moment of grieving comfort, as Mary looks on with strength and acceptance, the sacrifice of her son, as he is Here, too, is a great moment of symbolism within the painting. Christ is being raised into the sky. Rubens is also informing us of the transformative event that the crucifixion was. Christ is being elevated to the heavens, which he will soon return to as the first fruit of heavenly ascent that the rest of us will join him on. So, this isn't just Christ on the cross, like earlier Renaissance paintings, such as Matthias Grunewald's Christ and Mary and John, though that is a wonderful painting. The fact that Rubens is depicting the elevation of Christ captures both aspects of the crucifixion. Christ's death, which of course we are witnessing and see very clearly, but also his eventual ascension into heaven, which is more subtly communicated by the fact that Christ is being elevated into the sky, therefore foreshadowing his resurrection and This returns us to what I've been speaking of concerning the activity of Rubens's paintings. Rubens's paintings capture not a static understanding of humanity. Rubens's paintings embody the reality of an active spirit of life that is central to human existence. Passion, Rubens is telling us, is the essence of human life and indeed the essence of Christian theology. It can lead to death and destruction. It can lead to struggle and combat. It can lead to our salvation. This is why Rubens is irresistible and few, if any, painters have been able to match his greatness after 400 years. The human condition in all of its totality really does pulsate through his paintings and they invite us to rediscover our own humanity.