A devotional cycle, traditionally of fourteen scenes, tracing Christ's journey from condemnation to burial; often realized as reliefs or sculptural groups along church walls.
The Stations of the Cross, or Via Crucis, form a devotional sequence tracing Christ’s Passion from his condemnation by Pilate to his burial. The traditional Catholic form contains fourteen stations, although other scripturally based forms also exist.
Churches commonly represent the stations as a coordinated cycle of reliefs, plaques, paintings, or sculptural groups placed sequentially around the nave or grounds.
Etymology
English name for Latin Via Crucis, “Way of the Cross.”
Sculptor Notes
This is fundamentally a problem of narrative sculpture. Fourteen scenes must read as one family while each remains immediately legible. Scale, framing, relief depth, viewpoint, figure count, and repeated motifs should be established as a system before individual stations are modeled or carved.
References
https://press.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/2002/documents/ns_lit_doc_20020329_via-crucis_en.html; https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/the-crucifixion-and-passion-of-christ-in-italian-painting