Cristo di San Giovanni della Croce

Description

The Christ of St. John of the Cross is a surrealist oil painting on canvas measuring 205 × 116 cm, made in 1951 by the Spanish painter Salvador Dalí. It represents the Crucifixion of Jesus.

It is kept in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow.

In the background you can see the beach of Port Lligat, the town where the painter lived. The crucifixion is seen from above, showing the nape and shoulders of Jesus nailed to the cross and almost bowed down.

A Jesus the Savior who therefore seems to want to show himself almost as not really nailed to the Cross, but rather juxtaposed, as if only suspended from it. A Christ of an impressive metaphysical beauty inserted in an immense dark sky, the bearer of a message that is certainly suggestive, but also strident compared to the depth of that of his compatriot Saint who lived four centuries before him: a Christ, that of Salvador Dalí, deprived of any real reference to the physical and spiritual experience of the Passion of Jesus. [citation needed]