Vatican Museums

In 1947 Rico Lebrun, Italian-American painter, muralist and sculptor in the figurative tradition, began to channel his creative energies towards religious subjects and those linked to human suffering. At this time he began the challenging conceptual work of a series dedicated to the Crucifixion, destined for Syracuse University, New York. During the three subsequent years he produced over 200 preparatory works, in the form of drawings and paintings, which were then shown in a major exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. They are reworkings in a Cubist vein of elements drawn from Florentine mannerism and the German Renaissance, which indicate the path by which Lebrun arrived as his definition of the Crucifixion Triptych. Linked to the genesis of the triptych, the painting Cock on the arm of the Cross dates however from 1950, at the end of this long enterprise, and offers explicit evidence of the artist’s attention to Guernica in the compositional plan of the work.