A Painter's Panoramic Passion

Exploring a richly-detailed Calvary scene from the late 15th century

Calvary, Master of the Death of Saint Nicholas of Münster, c. 1470/1480

In the Christian art of the West prior to the Renaissance — and, indeed, in the paintings and sculptures of all civilizations known to us — it was common to depict multiple events, separated from each other in time and space, in one and the same work. This tendency to crowd a complex story into a single “frame” is one of those few universals that we can discern in the art of all peoples.

With its newfound “naturalism,” Renaissance artists tended to focus on unity: unity of place (it had to “look like a real place”) and unity of time (it had to show one event or one moment). Granted, even artists from the Renaissance and subsequent periods did not always follow this naturalistic convention; complexity of action and density of symbolism are still found in their works. But it seems to become less and less acceptable or desirable as time goes on. It is almost unheard-of in Baroque or Neoclassical work.

Today, however, I would like to take readers on a visual tour of a stunning painting that makes room for an extravagant multiplicity of narrative scenes in one frame. The painting, a Calvary scene by an anonymous German painter of the 15th century, the “Master of the Death of Saint Nicholas of Münster,” is on display in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. My up-close experience of this work in my last visit to DC (October 2023) caused me to become enthralled with it. For starters, the painting is on a grand scale: 6 1/2 feet by 4 1/4 feet. It has enough magnitude to suck you into it as you stand before it.

Front and center, as one would expect, is Our Lord upon the Cross.

His Precous Blood flows freely, even energetically, down His arms, His face, His neck and chest, His abdomen (we are seeing the moment when the soldier pierces His side), His leg, and especially His feet. An edge of the tiny loin-cloth is waving in the wind, as if alive with a life of its own. A tightly plaited band of thorns cleaves to His head. A sober gold halo is the only reminder that this man, even dead, is the Son of God. (Due to the hypostatic union of the Word of God to the human nature, the dead Body of Christ on the Cross or in the tomb is God, and the separated soul of Christ in the underworld is God. Both are worthy of adoration.)