Published in Languages and Cultures in Tradition

Shortly before his arrest in Toledo, Juan de Yepes y Álvarez drew a small, crucified Christ while working in Ávila, where he was already known as Fray Juan de la Cruz, supposedly from the memory of an epiphanic vision. To this day, it is considered his only known creative legacy produced according to Fine Arts standards. Except for another lost drawing, merely illustrative and not very technical, whose allographic reproduction was incorporated into editions of his writings, after his imprisonment Juan dedicated himself exclusively to poetry and prose. The gaps in an oral and mysterious history, the exceptionality of collateral existence, but above all, the expressive power of high plastic quality of this single surviving autograph drawing, although preserved as a relic, has frequented the memory and specialized literature on art over the years, from historians and critics to artists such as Salvador Dalí and Bill Viola.