The Crucifixion - Matthias Grunewald

In the picture we see a traditional religious plot - the crucified Jesus and the people around him who were gathered around him. If you try to characterize the impression that this creation leaves, in a word, it will be desperation.

We see a mutilated, sickly, thin man's figure with a truly martyr expression on a black background. The colors are very rich, and the bright figure stands out clearly in the dark. The facial expressions are incredibly emotional.

It should be noted that the human figures are much smaller in comparison with Jesus, which emphasizes his holiness and further distinguishes him from the others. This technique is typical for medieval painting: the size of the figures is determined not by the desire to reflect reality, but the desire to show which of them is more important than the rest.

The picture in something resembles a terrible dream, imprinted in the brain. The arms of Christ are disproportionately long, and the fingers are twisted and twisted, as if the last death cramp is compressed, the whole body is disfigured by torture, here and there thorns of thorns bite into it. The poses of Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist reinforce the impression of a nightmare. Holding something like a rag in his right hand, John seems to be pointing at the body of Jesus, his gaze is directed to the unknown. Mary Magdalene, kneeling and folded her hands as if in prayer, stretches them to Jesus.

The bloodied figure looks at the sympathizers from the top down with a slightly opened mouth with an empty, detached gaze. It seems that he is about to emit his spirit and will go to another world.

The artist pays a lot of attention to the hands, they serve as a tool for conveying emotions: the women have beautiful, white and delicate fingers intertwined in prayer, Jesus' fingers are martyric, curves, frighteningly terrible, permeated with pain.