The Gospel According to Jesus Christ

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THE SUN APPEARS IN ONE OF THE UPPER CORNERS OF THE rectangle, on the left of anyone looking at the picture. Representing the sun is a man's head that sends out rays of brilliant light and sinuous flames, like a wavering compass in search of the right direction, and this head has a tearful face, contorted by spasms of pain that refuse to abate. The gaping mouth sends up a cry we shall never hear, for none of these things is real, what we are contemplating is mere paper and ink, and nothing more. Beneath the sun we see a naked man tied to a tree trunk with a cloth around his loins to cover those parts we call private, and his feet are resting on a piece of wood set crosswise, to give him support and to prevent his feet from slipping, they are held by two nails driven deep into the wood. Judging from the anguished expression on the man's face and from his eyes, which are raised to heaven, this must be the Good Thief. His ringlets are another reassuring sign, for it is well known that this is how angels and archangels wear their hair, and so it would appear that the repentant criminal is already ascending to the world of heavenly beings. Impossible to say whether the trunk is still a tree that has been arbitrarily turned into an instrument of torture while continuing to draw nourishment from the soil through its roots, inasmuch as the lower part of the picture is covered by a man with a long beard. Richly attired in loose, flowing robes, he is looking upward but not toward heaven.

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