George Mayer-Marton’s Crucifixion mural at the Church of the Holy Rosary (1954–5) was one of several commissions by the Roman Catholic church in the North-West, but only one of three that survive.

Craigie Aitchison’s four Calvary panels for Truro Cathedral sit behind the altar in St Margaret’s Chapel. Bands of luminous colour – magenta, purple, emerald green – form the background, a simplified landscape. The first three panels are composed symmetrically. The two thieves slump on their crosses, one arm draped elastically over the cross-piece, each turned towards the central figure of Christ, who is depicted with his head raised and features cautious but peaceful. A ray of yellow light splits the deep pink sky in which a single star shines, while the Holy Spirit descends as two white lines. There are no human witnesses to the scene; instead, a black dog gazes up at Christ and a blue bird perches next to his shortened arm. The fourth panel shows, in the place of the Cross, a white, stunted tree, its single branch in bud. It is illuminated by a bright white orb – the moon, or perhaps the star from the second panel, grown larger . Aitchison has said of his repeated depictions of the Passion, ‘it is a horrific story, and I think more worth trying to say something about than anything that’s happened since.’ Here the horror is transformed into a strange and tentative hope.

Graham Sutherland's Crucifixion, unveiled in 1963, was the third he had created for a church and the first and only commission that he received from a Roman Catholic Church, despite being a Catholic himself. It taps another theme found within the revival of sacred art, a focus on the horror of crucifixion. For Sutherland this derives from reflection on the terror inherent in both Grünewald’s Isenheim altarpiece and the reality of the Holocaust.