Crucifix

Abstract

This painted wood crucifix is currently displayed in a chapel in the left aisle of San Lorenzo in Florence, with a later aureole behind, flanked by painted cut-out figures of the Virgin Mary and St. John the Evangelist, created by Lorenzo Lippi in the seventeenth century. It is not uncommon for crucifixes, which were often venerated as miraculous, to be later given such a narrative context. The pathos of the terribly thin, copiously bleeding, harshly angular body indicates that this is the work of a German sculptor from c. 1420-30. In contrast, Italian sculptors of the period depicted Christ's body as more elevated and classical, twisting with greater fluidity. In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, German sculptors who specialized in making crucifixes traveled through Italy. Photograph(s) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.