The Raising of the Cross is a 1633 religious painting by Dutch Baroque artist Rembrandt van Rijn. It is located in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, Germany.
Analysis of The Raising of the Cross
Rembrandt is perhaps the most renowned of the Dutch Baroque painters. The Raising of the Cross of 1633, painted when the artist was 27, is shrouded in smoky effects of tone. A group of men including a soldier pushes and hauls Jesus Christ on the cross upwards into position before a number of people.
In the very center of the painting is the brightest face and in contemporary dress for the seventeenth century is Rembrandt himself. This perhaps signals a protestant ethic in that the artist is depicting a deeply personal and close relation to the events of the Passion and simultaneously brings these events into the modern world.