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This scene is framed above by a beautiful landscape in which Jerusalem can be seen off the lakeshore, atop a hill, in the foreground. Behind the city is a mountain peak and a mountain range that disappear into the background. The city, mountains, and lake are flooded with light. A thick blanket of heavy black clouds that thins out just above the lake in the back looms over the mountains. While the presence of the black clouds is justified by the narration of the crucifixion ("and darkness came over the whole land...while the sun's light failed," Luke 23:45), and the light is explained by the words of the apocryphal gospel of Saint Peter when he describes the position ("and the sun began to shine again ", 6:21), the Jerusalem that appears in the painting - a city near water, with house, towers, and fortification walls, lying against rocky mountains - is decidedly an invented, Nordic city, which does not at all reflect the actual appearance, well known at that time, of this blessed city.
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