The Crucifixion

c. 1320/1325

Bernardo Daddi

Painter, Florentine, active by 1320, died probably 1348

A man hangs on a cross flanked by small groups of people against a shiny gold background in this vertical panel painting. The people all have pale skin tinged with gray. The man on the cross, Jesus, has long blond hair and a beard, and he wears only a translucent white cloth wrapped around his hips. Blood trickles from nails driven through his hands and one driven through both feet. Blood also spurts from a wound over his right ribs. A halo surrounds his head, which hangs down, eyes closed. The wood cross is about twice as tall as the people standing around it, and a panel at the top has the letters “ICXC” written in gold. A woman with long, unbound blond hair and wearing a vibrant red cloak wraps her arms around the foot of the cross. That woman and four people in the group of five to our left also have halos. There, two people support a woman who has swooned between them. That woman wears a black cloak, and her supporters cry, their brows furrowed and eyes squinted. Two people behind this group, one of whom has a halo, look up at Jesus. To our right, three bearded men also look at the cross. The man closest to us wears a white hood and a canary-yellow cloak over a moss-green robe. He holds both hands up high. A man behind him wears a helmet and a red cloak over sky-blue armor, and we only see the lined face of the third man, who has a white beard and hair. Three angels catch the blood trickling from Jesus’s two hands and the wound on his side in shallow gold cups. Each angel has blond hair, wears a topaz blue, long-sleeved garment, and has two pairs of wings – one coming from their backs and another crossing in front of their torsos. The cross stands on a low mound on a rocky ground. A small human skull is tucked into an opening below the mound. The bright gold background is punched with lines to create an inner border behind the scene, and the panel is framed with gold molding.

Media Options

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This small painting was probably the right-hand side of a diptych with two hinged panels. Very likely the panel opposite depicted the Virgin and Child. The man or woman who meditated on this image during private devotions would have made an intimate connection with the grief of the mourners who stood at the foot of the cross. The Gospels differ in their accounts of the Crucifixion, and so do paintings of it. Here, on the left, the swooning Virgin is accompanied by a group of holy women. One helps support her as she collapses against John the Evangelist. While they look at Mary with tender concern, all other eyes are turned toward Jesus and the angels who collect his blood. Mary Magdalene, recognized by her long flowing tresses, kneels and grasps the cross despairingly. Among the men on the right, in the armor of a Roman soldier, is the centurion who was converted on the spot, saying “Truly, this was the Son of God” (Matthew 27:54).

Small devotional works like this were a specialty of Bernardo Daddi and his workshop, one of the busiest in Florence in the first half of the 14th century. During those years, Daddi was the city’s leading painter. He may have studied with Giotto, adopting Giotto’s new way of giving real-world weight to figures by modeling them with light and shadow. But Daddi’s own style became less solid and more graceful and ornamental over time. The mourners in this work are ethereal, long, and slender, suggesting another influence, this one from the more abstracted and decorative style of Sienese painters.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 1

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    tempera on poplar panel

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    painted surface (including gilded frame): 34.9 × 22.7 cm (13 3/4 × 8 15/16 in.)
    overall: 35.5 × 23.6 × 2.7 cm (14 × 9 5/16 × 1 1/16 in.)
    framed: 40 x 27.9 cm (15 3/4 x 11 in.)

  • Accession

    1961.9.2

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: The Crucifixion, c. 1320/1325

This horizontal painting is made up of three parts: in the center square panel, a woman reclines under a wooden shelter set into a rocky cave, which is surrounded by angels, and narrower wings to either side are each occupied by a standing man. All the people have pale skin, which is tinged with faint green. The three panels are joined with a gold frame, and the gold background behind the central scene and the men in the side panels are covered with a noticeable network of cracks. In the central panel, a cobalt-blue robe nearly envelopes the reclining woman’s body; this is Mary. It covers her head and falls open where she crosses her wrists over her chest to show a pink garment underneath. A flat gold halo encircles her head ,and her body is surrounded by a field of crimson red, almost like an aura. She rests under a wooden structure with a pitched roof, which is surrounded by craggy, barren rock. A swaddled infant lies in a rectangular, tray-like manger. The infant’s head is also surrounded by a gold halo. Fine gold rays emanate down into the structure from a star just above the peak of the roof. A bull and a donkey look down at the baby from the far side of the manger. The interior of the structure behind them is black. In a smaller scale, two women wash a haloed infant in a tub in front of the rocky cave near the lower left corner of this panel. A man with a white beard and hair sits to our left of Mary, holding a pink cloak at his throat and looking toward the infant. Above and around the rocks, seven winged and haloed angels cluster on each side. One angel to the right presents a scroll with black writing to two men accompanied by a dog and several sheep in the lower right. The man in the panel to the left, Isaiah, has a gray beard and long, wavy hair, and he wears a lilac-purple cloak draped over a coral-orange robe. In his right hand, on our left, he holds an unfurled scroll with large black lettering. His other hand is raised with one finger pointing upward. He looks to our left, away from the central scene. On the right, Ezekiel, echoes Isaiah's pose. Ezekiel holds an open scroll with his left hand, on our right, and his other hand is raised. He also wears a coral-colored robe, but his is overlaid with a blue cloak. His receding hair is short and brown, as is his beard. Like Isaiah, he takes up most of the height of the panel and gazes to our left, toward the central panel.

Scholarly Series:  Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(N. van Slochem, New York) by 1908;[1] sold 1910 to Dan Fellows Platt [1873-1938], Englewood, New Jersey;[2] sold November 1943 by Trustees of the Platt Estate to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1961 to NGA.
[1] Dan Fellows Platt to Richard Offner; see Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Sec. III, vol. VIII, New York, 1958: 142.
[2] Dan Fellows Platt Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University, New Jersey: box 2, folder 23, call number C0860. The painting was lent by Platt to the Loan Exhibition of Italian Primitives at F Kleinberger Galleries, New York, in November 1917.
[3] Copies of the documents recording the sale are in NGA curatorial files; the painting was one of six purchased from the Platt estate and is listed as “Attributed to Bernardo Daddi.” See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2120.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1915

  • Loan Exhibition of Italian Primitive Paintings, Fogg Museum of Art, Cambridge, Massachusettes, 1915, unnumbered checklist.

1917

  • Loan Exhibition of Italian Primitives, F. Kleinberger Galleries, New York, 1917, no. 3, repro., as Christ on the Cross by Bernardo Daddi.

1939

  • Masterpieces of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture from 1300-1800, New York World's Fair, May-October 1939, no. 72, repro.

  • Seven Centuries of Painting: A Loan Exhibition at San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, December 1939-January 1940, no. 13.

1946

  • Recent Additions to the Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1946, no. 795.

Bibliography

1911

  • Perkins, F. Mason. "Dipinti italiani nella raccolta Platt." Rassegna d’Arte 11 (1911): 1.

1914

  • Brown, Alice van Vechten, and William Rankin. A Short History of Italian Painting. London and New York, 1914: 65 n. 3.

  • Sirén, Osvald. "Pictures in America by Bernardo Daddi, Taddeo Gaddi, Andrea Orcagna and His Brothers, I." Art in America 2 (1914): 264.

1915

  • Edgell, George Harold. "The Loan Exhibitiion of Italian Paintings in the Fogg Museum, Cambridge." Art and Archaeology II, no. 1 (July 1915): 13.

1917

  • Sirén, Osvald. Giotto and Some of His Followers. 2 vols. Translated by Frederic Schenck. Cambridge, 1917: 1:168, 270; 2:pl. 147.

1918

  • Gilman, Margaret. "A Triptych by Bernardo Daddi." Art in America (1918): 213.

1919

  • Offner, Richard. "Italian Pictures at the New York Historical Society and Elsewhere." Art in America 7 (1919): 149.

1923

  • Marle, Raimond van. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. 19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 3(1924):378.

1928

  • Comstock, Helen. "The Bernardo Daddis in the United States." International Studio 38 (1928): 21.

1930

  • Offner, Richard. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. III: The Works of Bernardo Daddi. New York, 1930: 5.

1931

  • Venturi, Lionello. Pitture italiane in America. Milan, 1931: no. 35, repro.

1932

  • Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and Their Works with an Index of Places. Oxford, 1932: 165.

1933

  • Venturi, Lionello. Italian Paintings in America. Translated by Countess Vanden Heuvel and Charles Marriott. 3 vols. New York and Milan, 1933: 1:no. 44, repro.

1936

  • Berenson, Bernard. Pitture italiane del rinascimento: catalogo dei principali artisti e delle loro opere con un indice dei luoghi. Translated by Emilio Cecchi. Milan, 1936: 142.

1939

  • Valentiner, Wilhelm R., and Alfred M. Frankfurter. Masterpieces of Art. Exhibition at the New York World’s Fair, 1939. Official Souvenir Guide and Picture Book. New York, 1939: no. 32.

1944

  • Frankfurter, Alfred M. The Kress Collection in the National Gallery. New York, 1944: 15, repro., as by the Riminese Master.

1945

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 12, repro., as by Bernardo Daddi.

1946

  • Frankfurter, Alfred M. Supplement to the Kress Collection in the National Gallery. New York, 1946: 21, repro.

1951

  • Einstein, Lewis. Looking at Italian Pictures in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1951: 23.

1958

  • Offner, Richard. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. VIII: Workshop of Bernardo Daddi. New York, 1958: 142-143, pl. 38.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 20, repro., as by Bernardo Daddi.

1963

  • Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Florentine School. 2 vols. London, 1963: 1:58.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 36.

1966

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII-XV Century. London, 1966: 25-27, fig. 69.

1967

  • Kermer, Wolfgang. "Studien zum Diptych in der sakralen Malerei von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts." 2 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, Eberhardt-Karls-Universität, Tübingen, 1967: 1:255 n. 48.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 29, repro.

1972

  • Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 63, 290, 646, 665.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 90, repro.

1979

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:154-155; 2:pl. 109.

1984

  • Boskovits, Miklós. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. 9: The Miniaturist Tendency. Florence, 1984: 67 n. 246.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 111, repro.

1989

  • Offner, Richard, Miklós Boskovits, and Enrica Neri Lusanna. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. III: The Works of Bernardo Daddi. 2nd ed. Florence, 1989: 67, 391.

2001

  • Offner, Richard, Miklós Boskovits, Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay Rodio. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. V: Master of San Martino alla Palma; Assistant of Daddi; Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece. 2nd ed. Florence, 2001: 13 n. 22, 635.

2008

  • Skaug, Erling S. "Bernardo Daddi’s Chronology and Workshop Structure as Defined by Technical Criteria." In Da Giotto a Botticelli: pittura fiorentina tra gotico e rinascimento. Atti del convegno internazionale Firenze, Università degli Studi e Museo di San Marco, May 20-21, 2005. Edited by Francesca Pasut and Johannes Tripps. Florence, 2008: 79-96.

2016

  • Boskovits, Miklós. Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 2016: 58-63, color repro.

Inscriptions

upper center on the tablet topping the cross: IC . XC (Jesus Christ) [1]

Wikidata ID

Q20173033

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