The Mourning Madonna

This Mourning Madonna by the Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, was originally part of a monumental painted crucifix of the type that dominated Italian church interiors in the 13th century. The artist, named for a group of crucifixes associated with Franciscan churches in Umbria and Tuscany, worked in a refined Italo-Byzantine style around 1270. Such crucifixes, with flanking figures of the Virgin and Saint John, hung from choir screens and served as the primary visual focus of the liturgy.

Painted in egg tempera on a shaped wood panel with gold ground, the figure displays the elongated proportions and stylized grief expression typical of the Umbrian school. The delicate linear treatment of the blue mantle and the subtle tonal modeling of the face suggest an artist of considerable refinement working within established Byzantine conventions.