Christ Carrying the Cross (El Greco, New York) Christ Carrying the Cross (El Greco, New York) Christ Carrying the Cross is a 1580 painting by El Greco, produced early in his Toledo period in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The picture depicts Christ's sacrifice for mankind as represented by his gentle embrace of the cross and his heavenward gaze. The artist frequently returned to the subject, as seen in works now in Madrid and Barcelona. Its owners have included Sir William Stirling Maxwell (1818–1878), General Archibald Stirling and Lieutenant Colonel William Stirling. In 1953 it was acquired by Robert Lehman and in 1975 it was
Posthumous fame of El Greco as a "mad painter" and, therefore, his "maddest" paintings were not admired but considered to be historical documents proving his "madness". During the operation of the Spanish Museum, El Greco became the ideal romantic hero, the gifted, the misunderstood, the marginal, the one who lost his reason because of the scorn of his contemporaries. The critics of "Courrier Français" and "La Presse" would retain the image of El Greco as a "mad painter". His "maddest" paintings were not admired but considered to be historical documents proving his "madness". In 1867, Paul Lefort, an expert on Spanish painting, dedicated an eight-page