Nailing Christ to the Cross
Gustave Doré, 1866 · John 19:18
The passage
Where they crucified him, and two other with him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst.
John 19:18
About this plate
The cross is flat on the ground and the work is under way. A soldier kneels at the right with a hammer raised. Another leans across the beam. A rope runs off to the right where men are already hauling. Behind, a second cross stands upright with a figure being fixed to it, and a crowd of spears and horses runs back into the sky.
Doré draws a work party. There is no opening sky, no swooning group of women, none of the standard machinery. There is a job on a hill, three men to be executed, and a schedule.
John's verse is the flattest in the passion and probably the most terrible: Where they crucified him, and two other with him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst. It is a seating plan.
And it is worth noticing what the sentence does not contain. No adjective. No emotion. No word for pain. The evangelist gives the arrangement of three bodies in space and moves on to the sign over the head, and Doré's plate matches that register exactly.
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