The Virgin surrounded by twelve apostles

The Master of the Pesaro Crucifix is an anonymous Adriatic painter of the late thirteenth century named for a processional crucifix in Pesaro, active in the borderland between the Byzantine and central Italian Gothic traditions. His Virgin Surrounded by Twelve Apostles belongs to the Pentecostal or Dormition iconographic tradition in which Mary appears as the spiritual centre of the apostolic community. The composition, with its symmetrical arrangement of apostles around a central enthroned or standing Virgin, derives from Byzantine Deesis and Mandylion traditions adapted for Western devotional format.

The Master employs the Adriatic Byzantine-Gothic technique: egg tempera over gesso on panel with gold ground, the figures rendered with the hierarchic frontality and Byzantine parallel hatching of the eastern tradition but with the emerging Italian Gothic interest in physiognomic variety. The apostles are differentiated by attribute and facial type in the manner of Adriatic panel painting of the 1270s–1290s.