Thief, the Cross and the Wheel

When spectators in the Middle Ages examined images of Christ's crucifixion on Mount Calvary, did they ever consider them as representations of capital punishment? This work argues that they did, and traces connections between religious devotion, physical pain, criminal justice and judicial spectatorship, to explain why. The author's focus is not on the crucified Christ as he was represented in altar pieces during the late-medieval and Renaissance eras, but on his criminal counterparts, the Two Thieves of the gospels. Artists in Germany and elsewhere were constrained by church doctrine as to how they could represent Christ's Passion, but were free to explore the most abject of cruelties when they turned to the Thieves. The frequently shocking images of torture and death they depicted - notably the horrific process of breaking on the wheel - were the preferred means of executing contemporary malefactors. Insisting that pain as spectacle was central to the European experience, the author warns of its contemporary re-emergence in the public sphere.