The Crucifixion, c. 1320/1325

The panel, which to judge from its proportions and rectangular shape was probably originally the right shutter of a diptych,[1]  [1]
Usually the scene of the Crucifixion is shown in the right shutter of diptychs, flanked by an image of the Madonna and Child; cf. Wolfgang Kermer, Studien zum Diptychon in der sakralen Malerei: Von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts, 2 vols. (PhD diss., Eberhardt-­Karls-­Universität, Tübingen, 1967); Victor M. Schmidt, Painted Piety: Panel Paintings for Personal Devotion in Tuscany, 1250 – ​1400 (Florence, 2005), 31 – ​60.
shows the Crucifixion, with the kneeling Mary Magdalene clinging to the cross; to the left, Mary, Mother of Jesus, who swoons, supported by her arm on the shoulders of one of the holy women on one side and Saint John on the other;[2]  [2]
In representations of the Crucifixion, when the cross is not flanked solely by the figures of the Virgin Mary and Saint John, arranged on either side of Christ, Mary and the holy women are represented (as they are here) to the left of the crucified Christ. The Gospels tell us that Christ on the cross was accompanied by Mary Magdalene (Matthew 27:56); by Mary, wife of Clopas (John 19:25); by Mary, mother of James and Joses (Mark 15:40); and by Salome (Mark 15:40), sometimes identified as the sister of the mother of Jesus (John 19:25). and, to the right, the centurion, a Pharisee, and a third man, who witness the Crucifixion with arms and eyes raised and seem to speak to Christ on the cross.[3]  [3]
The centurion who recognizes the dying Jesus as the Son of God (Matthew 27:54; Mark 15:39; Luke 23:47) is a common element in Crucifixion iconography. But so too are onlookers with long beards and veiled heads, indicated as Jewish religious leaders, whom the Gospel narratives also attest to as being present at the Passion of Christ (Matthew 27:4; Mark 15:31; Luke 23:35).
To the sides of the cross, against the gold groundGround
 The layer or layers used to prepare the support to hold the paint., small angels in flight gather the blood that flows from the Savior’s wounds.

Mentioned only perfunctorily by art historians, but in general linked to the name of Bernardo Daddi, the painting in the National Gallery of Art was first introduced to the literature by F. Mason Perkins (1911) as a “genuine, albeit rather weak little work” of this artist.[4]  [4]
F. Mason Perkins, “Dipinti italiani nella raccolta Platt,” Rassegna d’arte 11 (1911): 1. Later scholars confirmed the attribution until Richard Offner declassified the painting in 1930, inserting it among those erroneously attributed to the master.[5]  [5]
Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 3, Works Attributed to Bernardo Daddi (New York, 1930), 5. Osvald Sirén (1917) compared the panel to similar versions of the Crucifixion painted by the artist, particularly those in the Galleria dell’Accademia and Museo Horne in Florence; he judged it an early work,[6]  [6]
Galleria dell’Accademia, no. 8563, and Museo Horne, no. 43, both in Florence; see Osvald Sirén, Giotto and Some of His Followers, trans. Frederic Schenck, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1917), 1:168, 270; and Richard Offner and Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 4, Bernardo Daddi, His Shop and Following, new ed. (Florence, 1991), 250 – ​253, 50 – ​54. while Raimond Van Marle (1924) pointed out its affinity with the portable triptychTriptych
 A picture consisting of three parts. The term denotes both the object itself and its compositional form. As an object, the triptych may vary in size and material, but usually consists of a central panel flanked by wings (or shutters), which may be hinged; as a compositional form it is a tripartite structure, often with an emphasized central element. Although its imagery was, until the 19th century at least, predominantly religious, the object as such was not tied to a specific function. —Victor M. Schmidt, Grove Art © Oxford University Press in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena, dated 1336.[7]  [7]
No. 60; see Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 3, The Florentine School of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1924), 378; and Richard Offner and Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 4, Bernardo Daddi, His Shop and Following, new ed. (Florence, 1991), 316 – ​321. Lionello Venturi (1931), however, rejected Offner’s doubts about the autograph status of the Washington Crucifixion, and compared the painting with Bernardo’s portable triptych dated 1333 in the Museo del Bigallo in Florence; Venturi (1933) maintained that the work was actually superior in quality to the triptych in the Lindenau-­Museum in Altenburg,[8]  [8]
Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 35; Lionello Venturi, Italian Paintings in America, trans. Countess Vanden Heuvel and Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1:no. 44. The modern literature generally recognizes both the dated triptych in the Museo del Bigallo and the triptych no. 15 in the museum in Altenburg as autograph works by Daddi; see Richard Offner, Miklós Boskovits, and Enrica Neri Lusanna, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 3, The Works of Bernardo Daddi, new ed. (Florence, 1989), 170 – ​183, 222–227. in which Offner, by contrast, recognized Bernardo’s hand. Further, after Offner (1958) noted for the first time retouches in various parts of the panel and proposed a classification “close to the Master of S. Martino alla Palma,” opinions were divided: Bernard BerensonBerenson, Bernard
 (June 26, 1865–October 6, 1959) Art historian and connoisseur. Son of a Lithuanian timber merchant who emigrated to the United States with his family in 1875, he was educated at the Latin School, Boston, and at Harvard University, where he studied Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and German. In an unsuccessful application for a traveling fellowship to Europe, he wrote, ‘Art prevails in this programme because it is there that I feel myself weakest. One can study literature here . . . but art not at all.’ On his subsequent visit to Europe in 1885, financed by friends, his rapid visual self-education led to the decision to settle in Italy and to devote his life to the study of Italian art. —William Mostyn-Owen, Grove Art © Oxford University Press (1963), followed by Burton Fredericksen and Federico Zeri (1972), maintained the attribution to Bernardo, while the Gallery (1965, 1968, 1985) and Fern Rusk Shapley (1966) classified the painting as “attributed to Daddi,” and Wolfgang Kermer (1967) and later Shapley herself (1979) spoke of “Follower of Daddi.”[9]  [9]
Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 8, Workshop of Bernardo Daddi (New York, 1958), 142; Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School, 2 vols. (London, 1963), 1:58; Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-­Nineteenth-­Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 63, 290, 646, 665; National Gallery of Art, Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1965), 36; National Gallery of Art, European Paintings and Sculpture: Illustrations (Washington, DC, 1968), 29; National Gallery of Art, European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1985), 111; Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII– XV Century (London, 1966), 26 – ​27; Wolfgang Kermer, Studien zum Diptychon in der sakralen Malerei: Von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts, 2 vols. (PhD diss., Eberhardt-­Karls-­Universität, Tübingen, 1967), 1:255 n. 48; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:155. The present writer, after having cited the panel as a studio work by the artist (1984), has since 1989 expressed his conviction that it is a fully autograph work by Bernardo.[10]  [10]
Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 9, The Miniaturist Tendency (Florence 1984), 67 n. 246. Ada Labriola (1999) also accepted this proposal, as did Laurence Kanter (in correspondence), who noted similarities to the so-called Master of San Martino alla Palma and pointed out the archaism of the frame carved in one with the panel support.[11]  [11]
Ada Labriola, “Daddi, Bernardo,” in Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, ed. Günter Meißner (Munich, 1999), 23:356–357.

The affinities noted by Offner between the Washington Crucifixion and the work of the Master of San Martino alla Palma are worth underlining, since they throw some light on Daddi’s beginnings and on the date of this painting. Thought in the past to be a follower of Bernardo, the Master of San Martino alla Palma is now recognized to have been at work not after, but at the same time as, Daddi’s initial phase and had probably begun his activity even earlier.[12]  [12]
Writing about the Master of San Martino alla Palma in 1947, Richard Offner — ​​the scholar who initiated and devoted greatest attention to the study of this artist — ​​placed his output in the second quarter of the fourteenth century, considering him in essence a follower of Daddi: Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 5, Bernardo Daddi and His Circle, ed. Miklós Boskovits, Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay Rodio, new ed. (Florence, 2001), 73 – ​80. Only later did Luciano Bellosi point out that the art of this anonymous master must represent a “proto-­Daddesque” episode, to be placed in the first decades of the century and to be related to the activity of the Master of the Codex of Saint George. The latter, the most manifestly gothicizing in style of Florentine artists of the period, is known to have been active in the years shortly after 1315; cf. Luciano Bellosi, Buffalmacco e il Trionfo della morte (Turin, 1974), 78; Luciano Bellosi, “Moda e cronologia: B) per la pittura di primo Trecento,” Prospettiva 11 (1977): 16 – ​17; and Chiara Forzini, in Bonifacio viii e il suo tempo: Anno 1300 il primo Giubileo, ed. Marina Righetti Tosti-­Croce (Milan, 2000), 151 – ​152. The present writer has conjectured that the Master of San Martino alla Palma “received his training in the circle of Lippo di Benivieni around or soon after 1310 and​ . . . ​came into contact with Daddi only at a later stage”; Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 9, The Miniaturist Tendency (Florence, 1984), 67. The very fact that he used freehand incisions with a graving tool, and not punch marks, to decorate the halos and ornamental borders of his paintings suggests that the Master’s oeuvre did not extend beyond the third decade of the fourteenth century; it was only after that date that the use of decorations with punched motifs in the gold ground of panels began to spread rapidly in Florence.[13]  [13]
According to Erling S. Skaug, Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Ange­lico: Attribution, Chronology, andWork­shop Relationships in Tuscan Panel Painting with Particular Consideration to Florence, c. 1330 – ​1430, 2 vols. (Oslo, 1994), 1:34 – ​36, 78 – ​80, the use of punch marks in the decoration of panel paintings in Florence caught on no earlier than the early 1330s, with few exceptions. This finding, however, should not be understood as a rigid terminus post quem; Skaug, in fact, established it only by considering securely dated paintings and without taking into account works such as Giotto’s crucifix in the Church of Ognissanti in Florence or the Pietà of Lippo di Benivieni in the Museo Civico of Pistoia, both undoubtedly earlier in date than 1330 and yet furnished with some, albeit partial, punched decoration. Cf. Giorgio Bonsanti, in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessant’anni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 147 – ​150; Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 9, The Miniaturist Tendency (Florence, 1984), 174 – ​175. In light of our present knowledge, the very real similarities to the Master of San Martino alla Palma that Offner observed in our painting would imply a relatively precocious date for it, which can be extended also to two other similar compositions from Bernardo’s early phase, one in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston [14]  [14]
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, no. 23.211. Richard Offner and Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 4, Bernardo Daddi, His Shop and Following, new ed. (Florence, 1991), 225 – ​227, classified the painting as a product of the “close following of Daddi,” but the editors admitted (p. 505) the authorship of Daddi himself. The painting was later cataloged by Laurence B. Kanter, Italian Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, vol. 1, 13th – ​15th Century (Boston, 1994), 52 – ​54, as an autograph work by Daddi and thought to precede the triptych in the Uffizi, Florence, dated 1328. and the other, of which only two fragments are known today, divided between the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart and the Strossmayer Gallery in Zagreb [fig. 1]   [fig. 1] Bernardo Daddi, Fragment of a Crucifixion, c. 1325/1330, tempera on panel, Strossmayer Gallery, Zagreb.[15]  [15]
Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 8, Workshop of Bernardo Daddi (New York, 1958), 137 – ​140, classified it as “close to the Master of S. Martino alla Palma.” The fragment now in Stuttgart was acquired by the Staatsgalerie in 1969 (inv. no. 3064), and August Bernhard Rave, ed., Frühe italienische Tafelmalerei: Vollständiger Katalog der italienischen Gemälde der Gotik (Stuttgart, 1999), 84 – ​87, cataloged it as a work by Daddi himself. The affinities of all these paintings with those of the Master of San Martino alla Palma are undeniable, but the figures’ more elongated proportions, the more spacious but less rigorously calibrated structure of the compositions, and the figures’ restrained gestures and ponderous movements reveal a phase of particular attention to Giottesque models in the development of the young Daddi.[16]  [16]
Presumably the Giottesque models that influenced the artist during this phase were of the type of panels of the Crucifixion now in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (no. 1074 A) or that in Strasbourg (no. 167), both of uncertain date but generally placed in the more recent literature between the second and third decade. Cf., respectively, Angelo Tartuferi and Daniela Parenti, in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessant’anni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 164 – ​165, 170 – ​173. In these works, Daddi would have ascertained a tendency to populate the compositions with slender-proportioned figures that express themselves with expansive gestures, though not devoid of elegance, and in dress characterized by delicate, close-set, and slightly curving folds. In this phase, too, the chiaroscuro contrasts in the modeling are attenuated, with effects that have led some scholars to assign the execution of a good part of the works produced in Giotto’s shop between c. 1315 – ​1325 to a studio assistant variously identified under the conventional name “Parente di Giotto” or “Master of the Stefaneschi Altarpiece.” For his part, the Master of San Martino alla Palma, whom Offner called “a painter of a lyrical sweetness and bird-like volubility,”[17]  [17]
Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 5, Bernardo Daddi and His Circle, ed. Miklós Boskovits, Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay Rodio, new ed. (Florence, 2001), 73. never shows any signs of particular interest in Giotto’s figurative world. A motif like the swooning Madonna, who is supported by one of the holy women and by Saint John and who seems to be falling forward, as in the panel discussed here and in the fragment in Zagreb, is absent from numerous other, presumably later versions of the Crucifixion painted by Bernardo.[18]  [18]
Florentine painters of the early Trecento mainly represented the motif of the fainting Mary in such a way that the swooning Virgin, held up in the arms of one of the Marys and Saint John, can barely stand upright; she turns to the left with bowed head, as if she can no longer bear the sight of her dying son. See Evelyn Sandberg-­Vavalà, La croce dipinta italiana e l’iconografia della Passione (Verona, 1929), 148 – ​151. We find her in this pose in the various versions of the Crucifixion painted by Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337) and also in those by Bernardo Daddi, with the exception of those in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and that formerly in a private collection in Brussels; in these latter examples, the Madonna seems to be falling not forward but backward, assuming a pose very different from the more composed attitude usually shown in similar representations, including the panels in Washington and Zagreb. See Richard Offner and Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 4, Bernardo Daddi, His Shop and Following, new ed. (Florence, 1991), pls. 17 and 31. The passage would seem to suggest that the panel belongs to a phase of youthful experimentation preceding the dated examples of 1333. Several stylistic data seem, in my view, to lead to the same conclusion. Admittedly, in the Washington Crucifixion we no longer find the rigidly static composition nor the ponderous forms that distinguish the figures in the phase of Daddi’s closest allegiance to Giottesque models, datable between 1315 and the early 1320s, such as the frescoes in the Pulci and Berardi chapel in Santa Croce in Florence.[19]  [19]
The frescoes were perhaps executed c. 1320; Richard Offner, Miklós Boskovits, and Enrica Neri Lusanna, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 3, The Works of Bernardo Daddi, new ed. (Florence, 1989), 122 – ​145. Other works painted by Daddi around this date include, we may assume, the polyptych now dispersed among the Galleria Nazionale in Parma, the Museo Civico Amedeo Lia in Spezia, and a private collection; the Madonna no. 180 in the Pinacoteca Vaticana and the Mary Magdalene in a private collection that originally belonged to the same altarpiece; and the polyptych in the New Orleans Museum of Art. See Richard Offner and Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 4, Bernardo Daddi, His Shop and Following, new ed. (Florence, 1991), 425 – ​436, 133 – ​139, and 189, respectively; and the Madonna Enthroned in a private collection, on which see Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 9, The Miniaturist Tendency (Florence, 1984), 342, pl. 169. Nor do we find in it the spontaneity and immediacy of communication that characterize the triptych in the Uffizi, Florence, dated 1328, and that would become increasingly evident in subsequent works by the artist.[20]  [20]
For triptych no. 3073 in the Uffizi, Florence, see Richard Offner, Miklós Boskovits, and Enrica Neri Lusanna, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 3, The Works of Bernardo Daddi, new ed. (Florence, 1989), 110 – ​121. Other works belonging to the same phase and probably slightly later than the Gallery Crucifixion might include, for example, the Lucarelli polyptych in the Church of San Martino in Radda, in Chianti; the Madonna Enthroned in the Church of San Pietro in Lecore (Signa, near Florence); and the dismantled portable triptych in the Pinacoteca Vaticana, no. 177 – ​177b. Cf. Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 8, Workshop of Bernardo Daddi (New York, 1958), 66, pl. 11; Richard Offner and Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 4, Bernardo Daddi, His Shop and Following, new ed. (Florence, 1991), 105 – ​107, 63 – ​70. The lack of punched motifs, as well as the use of pseudo-­Kufic inscriptions in the marginal decoration of the painting in the Gallery, similarly suggests a dating prior to c. 1330,[21]  [21]
Erling S. Skaug, Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico: Attribution, Chronology, and Workshop Relationships in Tuscan Panel Painting with Particular Consideration to Florence, c. 1330 – ​1430, 2 vols. (Oslo, 1994), 1:99, registered the presence of tiny punch marks in Bernardo’s triptych of 1328 and in the undoubtedly earlier Madonna no. 180 in the Pinacoteca Vaticana. He also observed (110, n. 174) that Saint Paul and a Group of Worshippers in the National Gallery of Art, generally recognized in the more recent literature as an autograph work by Bernardo Daddi, is devoid of punch marks although it is dated 1333. On the problem of Daddi’s use of halo decorations incised in freehand as late as c. 1333 and its possible connection with the devastating flood in November 1333, see Erling S. Skaug, “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, ed. Francesca Pasut and Johannes Tripps (Florence, 2008), 79 – ​96. perhaps within the first half of the third decade.

Miklós Boskovits (1935–2011)

March 21, 2016

Associated Names