The Crucifixion

Francesco del Cossa

National Gallery of Art

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.