The Crucifixion

Andrea di Giusto, a Florentine painter active in the mid-14th century, created this Crucifixion panel around 1360. The scene of Christ's crucifixion was the central image of medieval Christian devotion, and Italian Gothic painters developed increasingly emotional and narrative treatments of the subject over the course of the Trecento. Now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, this work reflects the continuing influence of Giotto's revolutionary approach to sacred narrative on subsequent generations of Florentine painters.

Painted in egg tempera and gold leaf on panel, the Crucifixion follows established Italian Gothic compositional conventions with Christ on the cross flanked by the mourning Virgin and Saint John. The figures display the solid modeling and clear spatial arrangement characteristic of the Giottesque tradition in mid-Trecento Florence.