Christ on the Cross [reverse]

Andrea di Bartolo

National Gallery of Art

A thin, haggard, olive-skinned, nearly nude man is nailed to a wooden cross in this vertical painting. His body is stretched and elongated between wide-spread hands. Blood trickles from where each hand has been nailed to the cross and from a gash over his right ribs, on our left. The blood from the nail in his overlapping feet drips down the shallow platform on which they rest, down the foot of the cross, and onto the ground. His head droops down to our left, eyes closed and shaded under deeply furrowed brows. Blood also seeps from the ring of thorns around his long, coppery-red hair. He has a long, straight nose, a short beard, and his lips are slightly parted. The man wears a sheer white cloth loosely draped low on his hips. The background is streaked with tawny brown, burnt orange, and gold.