The exhibition of a work on a gold background, the gold background par excellence of Italian painting, is intended as a tribute to the memory of the jurist and collector Alberto Crespi (1923 -2022), who left his precious collection of Gold Backgrounds to the Museum.
La Crucifixion constitutes the cusp of a grandiose polyptych made by the Tuscan painter in 1426, destined for a chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Pisa and dismembered by the end of the 16th century. In a space defined by a precious gold background and bordered by an ogival arch, the panel depicts the Madonna, Saint John and Mary Magdalene weeping over the Crucified Christ. Masaccio interprets the drama by depicting a profoundly human grief, concentrating on only a few essential elements: the contracted hands protruding from the massive body of the Madonna, the hands brought to the face of the grieving and almost larval St. John, but, above all, the arms raised in an irrepressible motion of anguish of a faceless Mary Magdalene, kneeling from behind. Christ, depicted frontally, with his head slumped on his shoulders, thus assuming a view from below, rendered with a skilful foreshortening also through the shortening of his legs, succeeds in suggesting the painful humanity of a body abandoned to death. The figures, modelled with strong contrasts of light and shadow, are placed in a real space despite the golden background, the scene of a dramatic event taking place before the spectators' eyes.
Digital Assistant