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Crucifixion and Lamentation over the Dead Christ

The Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena

Gregorio di Cecco

(Vers 1390 - Après 1424)

Date : C. 1410 | Medium : Oil and tempera on canvas

This work by Gregorio di Cecco is painted on canvas. The medium was still rare in the early 15th century, suggesting that this was a processional banner. The upper part features a Crucifixion and the image below an Entombment. In Italy from the 13th century onwards, a change in attitudes led to a greater focus on the suffering of Jesus. In terms of the spirituality of the time, especially the Franciscan version, the pain of the Son of God was understood as absolute and necessary means of redemption. This dolorism had its parallel in the growing representation of the Virgin of sorrows, who is ultimately depicted in a faint, as in this painting from the early 15th century. These themes formed part of the construction of a more emotive spirituality, accessible to the faithful.

The artist belonged to a generation fascinated by the golden age of the first half of the 14th century. He perpetuated its taste for more refined drawing, balance in compositions, narrative power and a sense of the profane, for example, in the scene to the right of the cross where the soldiers are casting lots for Christ's tunic. In the garments, Gothic complexity makes way for a calm lull and courtly culture is retained only in certain details, for example in the shroud worn by the character on the left of the Deposition or in the garments worn by the holy women around the Virgin who is wracked with pain. They are associated with the loose folds and regular rhythms that the artist inherited from his master and adoptive father Taddeo di Bartolo.

The work is contemporary with International Gothic. This style, which is a synthesis of eclectic influences, reached its peak between 1380 and 1430. In this work, the gold background coexists with innovative three-dimensional touches like the foreshortened horse seen from the back in the foreground. Balanced and frontal, the traditional layout develops innovative off-screen effects. To the left of the cross, a curious knight illustrates the exotic decoration to which the final Gothic stage was sensitive. The reference to Antiquity, one of the foundations of the Renaissance, is present in the uniform of the soldier at Christ’s feet and his shield bearing the ancient Roman symbol SPQR, senatus populusque romanus, "the Roman Senate and people."

 

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