Christ on the Cross [reverse]

c. 1380/1390

Andrea di Bartolo

Painter, Sienese, active from 1389 - died 1428

A thin, haggard, olive-skinned, nearly nude man is nailed to a wooden cross in this vertical painting. His body is stretched and elongated between wide-spread hands. Blood trickles from where each hand has been nailed to the cross and from a gash over his right ribs, on our left. The blood from the nail in his overlapping feet drips down the shallow platform on which they rest, down the foot of the cross, and onto the ground. His head droops down to our left, eyes closed and shaded under deeply furrowed brows. Blood also seeps from the ring of thorns around his long, coppery-red hair. He has a long, straight nose, a short beard, and his lips are slightly parted. The man wears a sheer white cloth loosely draped low on his hips. The background is streaked with tawny brown, burnt orange, and gold.

Media Options

This object’s media is free and in the public domain. Read our full Open Access policy for images.

The painting belongs to an uncommon genre of devotional icons painted on both sides. It is a simplified version of the portable diptych in which the Madonna and Child was usually depicted on the obverse, and Christ on the Cross on the reverse. This panel presents an isolated image of Christ hanging on the cross, unattended by the usual figures of mourners, soldiers, or onlookers who allude to the event of the Crucifixion.

Andrea di Bartolo and his shop specialized in small devotional pictures like this one, which was owned and used for private meditations by the woman (donor) who appears kneeling in prayer on the panel’s obverse side, which is decorated with an image of the Madonna of the Humility. An attached frame, now lost, contained seven circular cavities, or roundels, that held the owner’s collection of relics (the remains of a holy site or holy person, of which those related to Christ and the Virgin Mary were most valued).

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 3


Artwork overview

  • Medium

    tempera on panel

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    painted surface: 30 × 18.6 cm (11 13/16 × 7 5/16 in.)
    overall: 30 × 18.6 × 0.8 cm (11 13/16 × 7 5/16 × 5/16 in.)
    framed: 52.7 x 34.3 x 7.9 cm (20 3/4 x 13 1/2 x 3 1/8 in.)

  • Accession

    1939.1.20.b

More About this Artwork


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Private collection, Italy, c. 1920.[1] (Alessandro Contini, Rome [from 1930, Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi]); sold October 1927 to Samuel H. Kress [1863-1955], New York;[2] transferred 1929 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York; gift 1939 to NGA.
[1] In his expertise dated 8 August 1934, commissioned from him by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation (copy in the NGA curatorial files), F. Mason Perkins states that he had seen the painting for the first time in an Italian private collection fifteen years earlier.
[2] The bill of sale for sculpture, maiolica, furniture, antique velvet, and several paintings, including a "Madonna and Child by Lippo Memmi...given to Donato Martini by some experts," is dated 5 October 1927 (copy in NGA curatorial files).

Associated Names

Bibliography

1936

  • Meiss, Millard. "The Madonna of Humility." The Art Bulletin 18 (1936): 437, n. 8.

1941

  • Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 133-134, no. 131, as by Lippo Memmi (?).

  • Richter, George Martin. "The New National Gallery in Washington." The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 78 (June 1941): 177.

1943

  • Pope-Hennessy, John. "A Madonna by Andrea Vanni." The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 83, no. 484 (1943): 177.

1946

  • Meiss, Millard. "Italian Primitives at Konopištĕ." The Art Bulletin 28 (1946): 6.

1951

  • Meiss, Millard. Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death. Princeton, 1951: 22-23, n. 34, 134.

1966

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII-XV Century. London, 1966: 66-67, fig. 174.

1968

  • Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 1:8.

1969

  • Os, Hendrik W. van. Marias Demut und Verherrlichung in der sienesischen Malerei: 1300-1450. The Hague, 1969: 18, 120, 187, pl. 10b.

1971

  • Os, Hendrik W. van. "Andrea di Bartolo’s Assumption of the Virgin." Arts in Virginia 2 (1971): 5.

1972

  • Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 6, 228, 346, 645.

1974

  • Os, Hendrik W. van. "Andrea di Bartolo’s Madonna of Humility." M: A Quarterly Review of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts 6, no. 3 (1974): 21, 25.

1979

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:3-4; 2:pl. 1a.

1982

  • Il gotico a Siena: miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti d’arte. Exh. cat. Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. Florence, 1982: 292.

1983

  • L’Art gothique siennois: enluminure, peinture, orfèvrerie, sculpture. Exh. cat. Musée du Petit Palais, Avignon. Florence, 1983: 274.

  • Kasten, Eberhard. "Andrea di Bartolo." In Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker. Edited by Günter Meissner. 3 vols. Leipzig, 1983-1990: 2(1986):976.

1984

  • Gilbert, Creighton E. "Tuscan Observants and Painters in Venice, ca. 1400." in Interpretazioni Veneziane: studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Michelangelo Muraro. Edited by David Rosand. Venice, 1984: 113 (repro.), 114-116.

1986

  • Maderna, Valentina, ed. Il polittico di Andrea di Bartolo a Brera Restaurato. Exh. cat. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. Florence, 1986: 10-11, 17.

1987

  • Freuler, Gaudenz. "Andrea di Bartolo, Fra Tommaso d’Antonio Cafarini, and Sienese Dominicans in Venice." The Art Bulletin 69 (1987): 577.

1989

  • Os, Hendrik W. van, J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer, C. E. de Jong-Janssen, and Charlotte Wiefhoff, eds. The Early Sienese Paintings in Holland. Translated by Michael Hoyle. Florence, 1989: 29, 32.

1992

  • Kasten, Eberhard. "Andrea di Bartolo." In Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker. Edited by Günter Meissner. 87+ vols. Munich and Leipzig, 1992+: 3(1992):514.

1998

  • Frinta, Mojmír S. Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting. Prague, 1998: 44, 48, 224, 230, 351, 479.

1999

  • Mannini, Maria Pia, ed. Da Bernardo Daddi a Giorgio Vasari. Exh. cat. Galleria Moretti, 26 September 1999. Florence, 1999: 56.

2005

  • Schmidt, Victor M. Painted Piety: Panel Paintings for Personal Devotion in Tuscany, 1250-1400. Florence, 2005: 222-223, 265 n. 82.

2009

  • Bellosi, Luciano, et al., eds. La collezione Salini: dipinti, sculture e oreficerie dei secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV. 4 vols. Florence, 2009, 2015: 1(2009):250, 252.

2016

  • Boskovits, Miklós. Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 2016: 7-13, color repro.

Wikidata ID

Q20173257


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