The Crucifixion

Bernardo Daddi

National Gallery of Art

A man hangs on a cross flanked by small groups of people against a shiny gold background in this vertical panel painting. The people all have pale skin tinged with gray. The man on the cross, Jesus, has long blond hair and a beard, and he wears only a translucent white cloth wrapped around his hips. Blood trickles from nails driven through his hands and one driven through both feet. Blood also spurts from a wound over his right ribs. A halo surrounds his head, which hangs down, eyes closed. The wood cross is about twice as tall as the people standing around it, and a panel at the top has the letters “ICXC” written in gold. A woman with long, unbound blond hair and wearing a vibrant red cloak wraps her arms around the foot of the cross. That woman and four people in the group of five to our left also have halos. There, two people support a woman who has swooned between them. That woman wears a black cloak, and her supporters cry, their brows furrowed and eyes squinted. Two people behind this group, one of whom has a halo, look up at Jesus. To our right, three bearded men also look at the cross. The man closest to us wears a white hood and a canary-yellow cloak over a moss-green robe. He holds both hands up high. A man behind him wears a helmet and a red cloak over sky-blue armor, and we only see the lined face of the third man, who has a white beard and hair. Three angels catch the blood trickling from Jesus’s two hands and the wound on his side in shallow gold cups. Each angel has blond hair, wears a topaz blue, long-sleeved garment, and has two pairs of wings – one coming from their backs and another crossing in front of their torsos. The cross stands on a low mound on a rocky ground. A small human skull is tucked into an opening below the mound. The bright gold background is punched with lines to create an inner border behind the scene, and the panel is framed with gold molding.