The ascent to Calvary, Giovanni Lanfranco (Terenzo, 1582 – Rome, 1647) circle

Oil on canvas (42 x 49 cm., framed 58 x 66 cm.)

All the details related to this painting can be viewed at the following – link -

This small jewel of the Roman seventeenth century, depicting the ascent to Calvary of the Passion of Christ, reveals the typical stylistic characteristics of the painting of Giovanni Lanfranco, a pupil of Agostino and Annibale Carracci, counted among the most representative artistic personalities of the Roman Baroque.

Our author, inspired by the style and composition of the master, stages with intense realism and calibrated theatricality one of the peaks in the story of the Passion, the moment in which Jesus falls exhausted under the weight of the cross, on the road to Calvary.

Despite an intense charge of pathos, the canvas presents an admirable balance in the plastic construction of the scene: Christ is kneeling on the ground, wrapped in a vermilion red robe, the color of martyrdom, and crowned with thorns, with his gaze turned to the Virgin and the disciple John, sharing his pain.

At the apex of the composition, a soldier on horseback who, without pity, orders Christ to get up, indicating the path he will have to take to continue his journey, while Simon of Cyrene, in the dim light, raises the cross with a gesture of help.

The canvas clearly takes inspiration, although it has numerous variations, from Lanfranco's painting created for the Sacchetti chapel in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini in Rome; our author must necessarily have taken inspiration from it, to respond to some request given the growing success of the master until his death.

Link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Salita_al_Calvario_-_Lanfranco.jpg