Crucifixion

This Crucifixion, dating from around 1330, is a late work by Giotto di Bondone, the Florentine master who is widely regarded as the father of Western painting. Giotto's revolutionary approach to depicting three-dimensional space and human emotion broke decisively with the flat, stylized conventions of Byzantine art. The painting is in the Louvre in Paris. Giotto's crucifixion scenes were among the most influential religious images of the early fourteenth century, establishing a new standard of emotional naturalism that would shape Italian painting for generations.

The composition demonstrates Giotto's characteristic approach to the Crucifixion, with the figure of Christ rendered with convincing physical weight and the mourning figures arranged in emotionally expressive groupings. The spatial arrangement, while still essentially planar, shows Giotto's revolutionary sense of three-dimensional volume through the modeling of drapery and the overlapping of figures. The tempera technique creates luminous, saturated colors on the gold ground.