Man of Sorrows

With legs crossed and chin cupped in hand, Luis de Morales’s Jesus is both regal and melancholic. He sits among the instruments of his torture and death: the column to which he was tied during the Flagellation and the cross that he carried and to which he was nailed. But rather than recreating the narrative of his sufferings, the painting shows Christ removed from those events, meditating on the objects that had inflicted his pain. As such he serves as a model and mirror image for the pious beholder of the painting.