“We need to understand where we’ve been, in order to understand where we’re going,” says art historian Dr Jennifer Sliwka towards the end of this film about classical western art that focuses on the Easter story, and it neatly sums up the film’s basic proposition. This parade of masterpieces, from the Italian Quattrocento to German expressionism and beyond, speaks for itself as a colossal achievement of western civilisation that, as critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston points out, is predicated around suffering.
