Francesco del Cossa

Ferrarese, c. 1436 - 1477/1478

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Italian painter (1436-1477)

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A mostly nude, thin man, Jesus, hangs by his outstretched hands from a wooden cross and is flanked by two people, one on each side of the cross in this round painting. Against a shiny gold background, the cross and two people stand on a gray stone platform that forms a base at the bottom. The two people below have peachy skin, and Jesus’s skin has a gray cast. All of their heads are encircled with flat, gold, disk-like halos. Eyes closed, Jesus’s face tips down to our left, and his body faces us. He has a copper-brown, forked beard, a prominent nose, and his lips are parted. Blood trickles from a ring of thorns around his head, over long hair. Blood drips from the nails holding his hands and feet, which overlap on the cross, and from a gash over his right ribs. A plaque at the top of the cross, over Jesus’s head, has the letters “INRI” painted in red. Standing at the foot of the cross to our left, an older woman wears an off-white wimple around her face and covering her neck, and an ocean-blue dress under an eggplant-purple cloak. Her head tips forward, her eyes closed and lips pressed into a frown. Her crossed hands grip her cloak at her waist. To our right, a man stands at the foot of the cross, his body angled to our left. His head tips slightly up to look at Jesus with narrowed eyes, his mouth turned down. He has long, sable-brown hair and a clean-shaven face. He wears a black tunic tied with a rope and a garnet-red cloak bunched at his waist and over his left shoulder. His left hand holds up his cloak. The surface of the painting is covered with a network of fine cracks and some of the brick-red layer under the gold shows through. Blood pours from Jesus’s feet onto a skull at the base of the skull. The platform on which they stand has an arched opening at the bottom center with some bones protruding from the dark, cavernous space.
Francesco del Cossa, The Crucifixion, c. 1473/1474, tempera on poplar panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.5

The Crucifixion

Francesco del Cossa · c. 1473/1474 · tempera on poplar panel ·  Accession ID  1952.5.5

Francesco del Cossa, Saint Florian, c. 1473/1474, tempera on poplar panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.227

Saint Florian

Francesco del Cossa · c. 1473/1474 · tempera on poplar panel ·  Accession ID  1939.1.227

Shown from the knees up behind a gray ledge, a woman with pale, peachy skin stands holding a palm frond in one hand and a disembodied pair of eyes branching from a stem like a flower in the other in this vertical, arched painting. Against a gold background, the woman’s body faces us, but her head turns to our left even as she cuts her hooded, light gray eyes down to the pair of disembodied eyes she holds to our right. On her oval face, one of her curving brows is lifted, and she has a rounded chin, flushed cheeks, and her pink lips are closed. Her blond hair is pulled up under a sheer white head covering, and the ends of opaque white fabric, like a scarf, flutter up over each her shoulders. She wears a ruby-red dress with ties up the sleeves, which are worn over a white undergarment. Over the dress, her forest-green robe is tied under her bust, and the edges are bordered with gold along the slitted openings for the sleeves and down the front. Green drapery falls behind the gray ledge, but is bunched up to our right, suggesting that one foot rests up on the ledge so the knee is at hip height. In her right hand, to our left, she holds a dark green palm frond with long, blade-like leaves. Held delicately in her other hand, the disembodied pair of eyes are attached with leaf-like sepals where the petals of a flower usually connect with the stem. The eyes are light brown and seem to look up between peach-colored upper and lower lids. A gold halo with radiating lines is incised into the gold background around the woman’s head. The top half of the panel is arched.
Francesco del Cossa, Saint Lucy, c. 1473/1474, tempera on poplar panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.228

Saint Lucy

Francesco del Cossa · c. 1473/1474 · tempera on poplar panel ·  Accession ID  1939.1.228

Bibliography

1941

  • Ortolani, Sergio. Cosmè Tura, Francesco del Cossa, Ercole de'Roberti. Milan, 1941.

1954

  • d'Ancona, Paolo, and Cesare Gnudi. I mesi di Schifanoia in Ferrara. Milan, 1954.

1956

  • Longhi, Roberto. Officina ferrarese (1934), seguíta dagli Ampliamenti (1940) e dai Nuovi ampliamenti (1940-1955). Florence, 1956: 28-36, 128-131, 179-180.

1958

  • Neppi, Alberto. Francesco del Cossa. Milan, 1958.

1959

  • Ruhmer, Eberhard. Francesco del Cossa. Munich, 1959.

1985

  • Emiliani, Andrea, et al. Tre artisti nella Bologna dei Bentivoglio: Francesco del Cossa, Ercole Roberti, Niccolò dell'Arca. Exh. cat. Bologna, 1985.

1986

  • Bacchi, Andrea. "Francesco del Cossa." In La pittura in Italia: Il Quattrocento. Ed. Federico Zeri. 2 vols. Milan, 1986-1987: 2(1987):603-604.

1991

  • Bacchi, Andrea. Francesco del Cossa. Soncino, 1991.

2003

  • Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 214.