Christ Falling on the Way to Calvary by Raphael was created in 1515 – 1516. The painting is in Museo del Prado Madrid. The size of the work is 318 x 229 cm and is made of oil on canvas.
Jacopo Basilio commissioned this painting for the Monastery of Santa Maria dello Spasimo in Palermo, from which it derives its popular name, lo Spasimo di Sicilia (“The Wonder of Sicily)”, which reflects Raphael´s interest in the depiction of extreme physical and psychological states. This work´s rhetorical tone and complex yet clear composition around two diagonals that converge on the figure of Christ, recall tapestry cartoons for the Vatican. Read more in Museo del Prado.
About the Artist: Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance Raphael was born in the small but artistically significant central Italian city of Urbino in the Marche region. Most modern historians agree that Raphael at least worked as an assistant to Perugino from around 1500. Raphael led a “nomadic” life, working in various centres in Northern Italy, but spent a good deal of time in Florence, perhaps from about 1504. Although there is traditional reference to a “Florentine period” of about 1504–1508, he was possibly never a continuous resident there… read more
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