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Andreas Johan Fleischmann Munich 1811 – 1887 Etching Historical collection of the Abbey "At midday there was darkness over the whole land until three in the afternoon". This is how the synoptics describe the eclipse that occurred at the hour of Christ's death. A cosmic event that marks the participation of creation in the great Mystery of the Christian faith: the death and resurrection of the Son of God. Fleischmann's engraving is the printed translation of the Crucifixion by Anthony van Dick painted in 1628-30 and preserved in Vienna in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. The German artist, through a dense network of signs, sometimes very fine, sometimes marked, supported by the pictorial transparency of the wash on the body of Jesus, creates a "night effect" of great suggestion. Christ on the cross is still alive, with his gaze dramatically cast to the sky where an eclipse of the sun is taking place. It was about noon, when the sun was eclipsed, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And the veil of the temple was torn in two. And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." And having said this, he breathed his last. (Luke 23:44-46) A livid light strikes the body and the fluttering white loincloth. The surrounding landscape, desolate and deserted, well expresses the drama of Jesus and his agony. On the left we can recognize Jerusalem and on the right the mountains of Judea. In the sky, between the rent of clouds, the moon - which shines with reflected light and which Origen will identify with the Church - is a symbol of the Jewish people, while the sun - thanks to the Christian reworking of the Roman Sol Invictus - is identified with Christ himself, the true Sun of humanity According to Saint Augustine, the eclipse was the symbolic exemplification of the theological truth concerning the death of the Redeemer. Christ made the two people one: the Old and New Testament, the Old and New Covenant, the Jewish people and the pagan people find a mystical unity in the cross of the Savior.