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Any first impression of The Procession to Calvary by Pieter Bruegel the Elder is telling. I can still remember my initial encounter with it. The scene came across as a chaotic, dizzying whirlwind of activity. Beyond the larger mourning figures in the foreground, I felt a deeper disturbance in the picture, the source of which remained unknown. It seemed to reverberate through the crowd that thronged the landscape, like ripples pushing through the water after a stone has been thrown in.
The sheer number of figures was overwhelming. I wasn’t sure where to look. What were they all doing? There were people milling around in a field, men on horseback, farmers hauling their goods toward the town. I saw a traveler resting with his giant pack, while nearby a man was being arrested. A woman tried to intervene as others scattered with their belongings. I observed the crowd staring at the commotion, the figures turning a blind eye, and still others completely oblivious, going about their daily business. In the background, children play. None of these vignettes, however, seemed to be what this painting was about.
Then it struck me: at the epicenter of the painting was the diminutive personage of Christ, hidden in plain sight, fallen under the weight of the collective sin of mankind. I could hear the crack as he hit the ground. Just behind him, the gaping jaws of the earth opened to swallow all things. This is The Procession to Calvary, the Via Crucis!
A sort of dispersing flow led my gaze to the distant hilltop where the men would be crucified. Encircling the site was a crowd. Among the bystanders, the first Christians gathered as a community around the sacrifice of our Lord. By an ingenious trick of pictorial composition (the similarity in shape), my eye was compelled to jump to the wagon wheel. Following the shaft downward, I arrived at a mound littered with bones: Golgotha.
Here Pieter Bruegel the Elder transports us in a vision to the remote foot of the Cross. We see women weep and pray as St. John consoles our Lady. A thistle, a symbol of original sin, grows in this darkened corner of the world. As viewers, we are both at the periphery and the center of this event—both/and. The name given to this place comes from the Hebrew noun גלגלת (gulgoleth, “skull” or “head”). A skull is prominently displayed; Christ is the head. It is also related to the verb גלל (galal, “to roll”). This rolling action is a key to unlocking the structures and patterns at work in this composition and, by extension, in this event.