La belleza del Crocifisso

This paper explores the ways in which, throughout the centuries, Christian art has presented the paradoxical «beauty» of the crucified Saviour, inviting believers to discover in that process the spiritual attraction of a condition which, in aesthetic terms, is often repugnant. Through the use of patristic textual material, the paper suggests how the mystagogical approach of the early centuries of Church teaching in fact has continued to provide a basis for this conceptual transition, and emphasizes the importance of the traditional liturgical context of sacred art in facilitating the process. The paper discusses works both of monumental art and of the so-called minor arts, made from early Christian times to the present, in order to suggest some of the underlying assumptions and noetic mechanisms operative in the Christian reading of the tortured and crucified Christ as «beautiful».