Crucifix with Scenes of the Passion

c. 1230–40
Framed: 186.6 x 160.7 x 12.7 cm (73 7/16 x 63 1/4 x 5 in.); Unframed: 185 x 160 x 10.2 cm (72 13/16 x 63 x 4 in.)
Location: 100 1916 Lobby
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Although the artist did sign this panel at the bottom, the signature is illegible, his first name perhaps being Michael.

Description

Large painted crucifixes dating from the 1100s and 1200s are among the earliest surviving Italian panel paintings. Large crosses, like this beautiful example, were typically suspended high above an altar in the main apse of Italian churches. Smaller crosses were placed on or just above altars in small side chapels. Such crosses served as the visual focus for devotion and symbolized the Eucharistic sacrament performed by the priest on the altar below. This crucifix shows Christ alive on the cross as the triumphant savior of mankind. Smaller images on the "apron" represent images of Christ's Passion (to the left) and his death and Resurrection (to the right). On the far left terminal appear the mourning Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist, while on the right the viewer is shown Saint James Major and Saint Bona, patroness of the city of Pisa. The concluding event, the Ascension of Christ, once appeared on the upper terminal, just above the Virgin and Apostles. The figure of Christ is painted in a severe and hieratic style suggestive of medieval Pisa's artistic and commercial links with the Byzantine East. The appearance of Saint Bona on this cross may suggest that it was made for the Church of S. Martino in Pisa, where Franciscan nuns tended the holy woman's relics.
Crucifix with Scenes of the Passion

Crucifix with Scenes of the Passion

c. 1230–40

Italy, Pisa

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Tales of the City: Drawings in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel
Tales of the City: Drawings in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel
By: Emily J. Peters, Curator of Prints and Drawings, The Cleveland Museum of Art and Laura Ritter, Curator of Netherlandish Art, The Albertina, Vienna, Austria. With contributions from Koenraad Jonckheere, Professor of Northern Renaissance and Baroque Art, Ghent University, Belgium, and Stephanie Porras, Assistant Professor, Art History, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana. Synonymous with artists such as Jheronimus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and with intellectual figures such as Erasmus, Hugo Grotius, and Karel van Mander, the sixteenth-century Netherlands witnessed dramatic religious, political, and social developments: the Protestant Reformation, the Eighty Years’ War, an economic boom and rising middle class, and the Netherlandish city’s flourishing as a site for civic and cultural identity. Tales of the City: Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel brings together sixteenth-century Netherlandish drawings from the collections of the Albertina Museum, Vienna, and the Cleveland Museum of Art in order to propose a new framework for understanding the role of drawing in Northern Europe during this turbulent period. Seeking to benefit from the vast array of opportunities presented by the vibrant urban culture, artists flocked to cities such as Antwerp and Haarlem early in the century. Trading nations, professional guilds, confraternities, civic militia groups, parish churches, and civic governments offered commissions for the adornment of their chapter houses, guild halls, and chapels. In this setting, drawing—previously employed mainly for copying—performed a multitude of roles. It became an indispensable tool for conceptualizing artistic projects, ranging from stained-glass windows, tapestries, and ephemeral decorations for festivals, to paintings and prints. Drawing also served as a means to explore new subjects, to convey ideas to collaborators, to maintain a record of workshop output, and to create autonomous works in their own right. Tales of the City features four essays and more than ninety catalogue entries by the exhibition’s curators and other scholars that address the range of innovative techniques and subject matter that artists such as Bosch, Bruegel, Hendrick Goltzius, Jan Gossart, Maarten van Heemskerck, and their contemporaries explored as they considered both the built environment and the rapidly changing social and ritual lives of their audiences. Thoroughly researched and lavishly illustrated, this volume and the exhibition it accompanies represent a major contribution to the study and appreciation of Netherlandish art and of drawing as an art form. 322 pages with 244 black-and-white and color illustrations Published October 2022

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