Vatican Museums

One of the themes that accompanies Pirandello's entire pictorial trajectory is that of the Crucifixion, of which the Vatican Museums conserve three examples produced from the 1930s until very shortly before the artist’s death in 1975. The version on display, which dates from 1934 and was donated by the painter’s widow, Pompilia Pirandello, offers a bewildering and distressing vision of the Passion. The body of Christ, observed from an angle between the two thieves, is placed against an abstract background, which accentuates the sense of alienation. Anticipating the donation to the Collection, Pirandello returned later on to focus further on the subject, producing a great number of studies and many oils, that brought him ever closer and more deeply linked to the intimate suffering of Christ on the cross.