CRUCIFIED CHRIST
Flemish carving made between 1513-1522 in polychrome oak wood, measuring 57 cm high and 51 wide. It is a solid size with added arms with a herringbone. The carving of the crown of thorns stands out for its large volume. It is currently in the Baptistry area.
This sculpture follows the gothic iconographic type of the dead Christ on the cross, reproducing with slight variations the model of the larger image of the Christ of the Mulattoes of the parent parish of El Salvador and its smaller replica of the Museum. of Arte Sacra Do Funchal in Madeira, which belonged to the temple of the convent of San Francisco.
Tendency to the verticality of his stiff figure, barely distorted by the tilting of the head frontally dropped on the right shoulder and the slight arching of the left leg to cross the foot below the flexed right-handed, thus making it difficult to transfer both overlapping by a single nail, but even in the slight inclination of the arms with respect to the horizontal direction of the patibulum or crossbeam from which they extend almost perpendicularly, which gives it a peculiar appearance of weightlessness despite the strong complexion of its small body.
The features of his countenance of facial fullness and painful aspect already mitigated by the serene placidity of death, with the superciliary arches straightened towards the start of his wide nose with blunt tip and the protruding cheeks, contouring the deep orbits where those bulging eyes are implanted now hidden behind the eyelids, an expressionless mouth with thin lips, an incipient moustache and an almost straight beard with the typical hooded fork at its ends. Dark hair combed with a parting in the middle and girded by the voluminous regular braiding of the hawthorn branches of the lacerating crown that is firmly encased until covering the middle of the forehead, framing the oval of the face with wide waves pulled back at the level of the temples, while it spreads in sinuous locks on the chest on the opposite side.
This piece could be identified with that "very poor little Christo", nailed to a cross "made of wood and with its foliage of carved lead, which is gilded", which formed a Calvary with two carvings of "Our Lady (of Sorrows) and of San Juan Evangelista ”flanking him inside“ a wooden box ”, in the front of the main altar of the old hermitage of San Miguel Arcángel de Tazacorte, where he occupied the space between the medium-sized“ Bulk Crucifix” placed in the center of the upper tier and the seated sculptural group of "Our Lady Saint Anne with Our Lady with her Son in arms on her right side"
However, the existence of this Crucified Christ had already been recorded on a previous visit made to it, on Saturday, December 13, 1522, by Fray Vicente Peraza, Bishop of Tierra Firme del Dairén, as part of his belongings was a “small golden crucifix with Saint Juan and Our Lady, placed in a tabernacle covered with a silk veil”
