The Savior Blessing and Stories of the True Cross

This large panel painting by the Maestro di Tressa, created around 1215 for a Sienese church, depicts the Savior Blessing surrounded by narrative scenes from the Legend of the True Cross. The Maestro di Tressa is one of the earliest identifiable personalities in Sienese painting, active in the generation before Guido da Siena. The True Cross legend, tracing the wood of Christ's cross from the Tree of Knowledge to its discovery by St. Helena, was among the most popular narrative cycles in medieval Italian art.

Painted in tempera and gold on a large wooden panel, the work combines a central iconic image of Christ with surrounding narrative compartments in the early Italian Gothic manner. The Maestro di Tressa's style shows strong Byzantine influence in the facial types and gold ground, with robust outlines and vivid narrative detail in the subsidiary scenes.