Calvary by Pietro Sassi: The Crowd Walking Home from the Crucifixion (c. 1870)
Most paintings of the Crucifixion bring you close enough to count the nails. Pietro Sassi’s Calvary does the opposite. The three crosses stand far off on a bare hill, small against the sky, and a single shaft of light breaks through the storm clouds to fall on the one in the middle. Below them a great crowd is already walking away, down the slope and back towards the walls of Jerusalem. Sassi, a painter of Roman views, turned the central event of Christian art into a landscape, and made the people who saw it the real subject. Pietro Sassi, Calvary , c. 1870. Oil on canvas, 120 × 200 cm. Fine-art print available from the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get this painting as a print → Quick facts Artist: Pietro Sassi (1834–1905) Title: Calvary Date: c. 1870 Medium: Oil on canvas, 120 × 200 cm, signed and inscribed Subject: The Crucifixion on Golgotha, outside the walls of Jerusalem Present location: Private collection (last off...