BBC - Seeing Salvation (2000) Part 3 The Cross

Christianity has produced some of the greatest works of art of all time, in which believers and non-believers alike can explore the great themes of life and death. It is the language in which Leonardo and Michelangelo, Dali and Rembrandt speak to us all about love and suffering, loss and hope. To mark the year 2000, these four programmes, written and presented by Neil MacGregor, Director of the National Gallery, London, consider how artists over two millennia have tackled the extraordinarily difficult task of representing Christ. Without contemporary accounts of Jesus' appearance, artists through the ages have been free to create many images of him - images that sometimes reflect the spiritual world of the artist and other times the desires of the patron or the needs of the spectator. Seeing Salvation is a four part series surveying the historical representations of Jesus Christ in Western European art and sculpture over the centuries since Roman Times.

Part 3: The Cross

At the core of the Christian faith is an image at once powerful and harrowing the figure Jesus on the Cross. Seeing Salvation Part 3 “The Cross” - describes the depiction of the crucified Christ, Christ on the Cross, and the shifting culture of sacrifice and redemption portrayed by these symbols. Throughout the centuries this image has come to symbolise different things to different people …sometimes the battle standard of a conqueror, at others a man whose suffering has a deeply personal resonance. In this episode of Seeing Salvation, Neil MacGregor examines the various responses of artists to this defining moment…the passion of Christ.

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