"Pasmo de Sicilia"

Raffaelo de Urbino
"Christ falls on the way to Calvary"





The popularly called "Pasmo de Sicilia" (Spanish for "Sicilian Wonder"),
its official title "Christ falls on the way to Calvary"has more miraculous legend attached than any other work in the Prado.It was saved from the shipwrecked boat carrying it to its destination ( the Sicilian church of Lo Spasimo in Palermo;the adaptation of this name gives the painting its nickname),
it left there for Spain,amid riotous protests against its sale to Philip IV of Spain; it escaped unharmed from the Alcazar fire in the 18th century; and it was kidnapped by the French during thte war of Independence and taken to Paris where it was transferred from the three large panels on which Raphael had painted it onto a canvas support which has preserved the painting magnificently.The Spanish momarchs always considered it to be the most valuable piece in the collection; records show that, in the evaluation of the Museum's paintings carried out following the death of Ferdinand VII,it was valued at more than thirty times more than Velazquez's Tapestry -Weavers.Its complex composition and the rich variety of pose and gesture of its numerous figures mad this painting famous from the moment it was created, in 1517,at the beginning of Cinquecento period:nothing had ever been painted before with such grand aims or such assured results.