The Crucifixion

The Artist: Fra Angelico was one of the creative geniuses of the Renaissance whose work has had an enduring impact on the Western idea of religious painting. The combination of the saintly man and a quintessentially devout style of painting were already part of his legacy in the fifteenth century and forms the core of Vasari’s life: "Fra Giovanni Angelico of Fiesole, . . . having been no less excellent a painter and miniaturist as he was a good religious brother, merits for one and the other reason a most honored memory."[1] We find this idea expressed by Michelangelo. For the influential British critic John Ruskin, Fra Angelico headed the school of painting he called Pure Religious Art: The School of Love. He declared of the artist that "he forms a class by himself—he is not an artist, properly so called, but an inspired saint".[2] This characterization tended to obscure his stature as an artist and his contribution to the creation of Renaissance style in Florence alongside Masaccio, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, and Donatello. In a seminal essay written in 1940, Roberto Longhi reasserted Fra Angelico’s position as "the first of any to understand Masaccio,"[3] and his role as one of the great innovators of fifteenth-century painting is now uncontested. What cannot be denied is that, as a Dominican friar and prior, he created a well-organized workshop that produced paintings specifically keyed to their devotional function. This resulted in works of great variety. Thus, for the friar’s cells at San Marco in Florence, he embraced pared-down compositions, reduced to essentials, that proved perfect for individual contemplation. By contrast, his altarpieces, such as the great Coronation of the Virgin in the Louvre or the badly compromised high altar of the church of San Marco are works of great pictorial richness. His frescoes in the Vatican show an artist no less aware of the secular world than the life of the convent.

The Picture: Christ is shown crucified on a cross surrounded by six diminutive angels, two of whom hold out bowls to catch the blood that drips from his wounds. Roman soldiers mounted on horses form a tight semi-circle. One, identified by tradition as Longinus, is shown at the far left, mounted on a gray steed and holding a spear. He has just pierced Christ’s side. The standing figure gazing upward, holding a rod with a sponge attached, is the centurion who, according to the Gospel of Saint Matthew (27:54), was converted, declaring, "Truly, this was the Son of God." In the foreground can be seen Christ’s mother, who has fainted, attended by three women. Saint John stands on the right side of the cross, his raised hands clasped in grief as he gazes as the Virgin Mary. The details of the picture are minutely observed. The centurion’s chest has curly hair; the soldier’s clothes are embellished with shell gold decorations. A work of remarkable invention and quality, it would seem—like The Met’s Pietro Lorenzetti (2002.436)—to be for private devotion.

The Attribution: The author of this modestly scaled but ambitiously conceived picture has long resisted a satisfactory identification. As a glance as the references reveals, prior to 1933 suggestions ranged, quite bafflingly, from the fourteenth-century painters Giottino (Florentine) and Pietro Lorenzetti (Sienese) to, more understandably, the fifteenth-century artists Masolino and Jacopo di Rosello Franchi. However, in 1933 Offner constructed a corpus of works around the painting, christening the anonymous author the Master of the Griggs Crucifixion (until 1943, The Met's painting was in the collection of Maitland Fuller Griggs). Among the paintings he ascribed to this anonymous master were some that were subsequently shown to have formed part of a documented altarpiece of 1423–24 by the minor Florentine master Giovanni Toscani (Bellosi 1966). With this recognition a consensus developed that The Met's painting was also by Giovanni Toscani—an eclectic artist who cribbed compositional ideas from Gentile da Fabriano, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Masolino, and the young Fra Angelico. The problem with this idea was that The Met's painting was superior in quality and more ambitious and innovative than any certain works by that master. The dilemma came into sharp focus when, in 1976, Eisenberg convincingly linked The Met's picture with an astonishingly inventive devotional painting of Saint Jerome in the Princeton University Art Museum. Especially the hands and upturned head of that figure bear close comparison with details in The Met's painting. Since the Saint Jerome bears the coats of arms of the Gaddi and Ridolfi, it can be dated to about 1424, when members of those two Florentine families married. (Kanter [2005, p. 56] has asserted that the coats of arms were added later, but there is no reason to believe that much time elapsed between the painting of the picture and the addition of the coats of arms; his analysis of the condition of the picture is open to discussion, and so also is his reconstruction of Fra Angelico’s early career.) The Saint Jerome had previously been ascribed to Masolino as well as to Fra Angelico, pointing the way to a more credible solution to the attributional conundrum of The Met's painting. Bellosi (1988) undertook a reconsideration of the two panels, which he argued were by the young Fra Angelico, and this attribution has now gained a broad consensus. (Kanter read the letters on the bridle of one of the horses as Fra Angelico’s signature: Fr[ater] Ihones. However the function of these shapes—some resembling letters—seems to be merely decorative and it is doubtful they were intended to form a name. See fig. 1 above.)

Pictorial Innovation: The salient aspect of the picture is a combination of delicacy and rigorously inventive poses. The figure of Christ—derived from Brunellischi’s Crucifix in Santa Maria Novella (a work of about 1410–15: fig. 2)—is viewed at a slight angle, his head falling to one side, with the cross viewed from below; the artist clearly had some difficulty in aligning the arms of the cross with the angled position, but the attempt is itself notable. The Roman soldiers are grouped in a semi-circle that creates a niche-like space. Especially the horses are brilliantly viewed from various angles, and the centurion is shown in an expressive pose, his head turned sharply upward, audaciously foreshortened. The use of a circular plan to organize space is characteristic of a number of Florentine works of art of the 1420s and early 1430s and is found in other works by Fra Angelico, such as his beautiful Madonna and Child Enthroned with Angels in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, and the Assumption of the Virgin in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.[4]

Dating the Picture: In contrast to the group of Roman soldiers, the holy women and Saint John at the foot of the cross are affectingly arranged in the foreground as a separate group. One figure, her hair streaming down, her hands extended in lamentation, bends over in a foreshortened pose reminiscent of a youthful page removing the stirrups of his master in Gentile da Fabriano’s Adoration of the Magi (Uffizi, Florence)—a work that was completed in 1423 but may have been underway as early as 1420 and that Fra Angelico studied closely. Given these features, The Met's Crucifixion would seem to date about 1420–23. Fra Angelico, who must have been born around 1395, is first documented as a painter in 1418, when he was commissioned to paint an altarpiece for the church of Santo Stefano al Ponte in Florence. Not long after, he joined the Dominican order in Fiesole (in 1417 he had been a member of a confraternity of flagellants). The Met's painting would thus date soon after his novitiate, when he returned to the practice of painting, but before the frescoes of Masolino and Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel of the church of the Carmine (ca. 1424–26)—works combining a mastery of perspectival space and the human figure that transformed the practice of painting and deeply influenced the work of Fra Angelico, beginning with the Saint Jerome in Princeton. However, it needs to be noted that there is a recent tendency among some scholars to date Fra Angelico’s paintings earlier than has heretofore been considered likely (see, for example, Kanter 2005, and Strehlke 2018).

Contrary to the suggestion of Kanter (2005), the picture, with its delicacy of execution and dense figural component, is more likely to have been intended for private devotion and seems unlikely to have formed the pinnacle of an altarpiece.

Keith Christiansen 2018

[1] Vasari, Le Vite, Florence, 1568, ed. 1878, vol. II (reprinted 1906, 1973), I p. 505.
[2] See Richard J. Dellamora, "The Revaluation of ‘Christian’ Art: Ruskin’s Appreciation of Fra Angelico 1845–60", University of Toronto Quarterly, Volume 43, Number 2, Winter 1974, pp. 143-150.
[3] Roberto Longhi, "Fatti di Masolino e di Masaccio," Critica d’arte, XXV-XXVI, 1940, pp. 145-191, reprinted in ‘Fatti di Masolino e di Masaccio’ e altri studi sul quattrocento, Florence, 1975, p. 37.
[4] See Millard Meiss, "Masaccio and the Early Renaissance: The Circular Plan," reprinted in The Painter’s Choice, New York, 1976, pp. 63–81.

Inscription: Inscribed: (lower right, on breast strap of horse) . . . hone; (on cross) INRI

Vallardi, Milan (by 1847; as Italian school, 14th century); chevalier A. d'Arache, Turin (until 1860; sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, December 10ff., 1860, no. 25, as by Giotto, from the Vallardi collection, for Fr 810); Charles A. Loeser, Florence; Count Grigoriy Sergeyevich Stroganov, Rome (until d. 1910); his daughter, Princess Maria Grigorievna Scerbatov, Rome (1910–14); private collection, Rome (about 1914–about 1925); [Edward Hutton, London, about 1925]; Maitland Fuller Griggs, New York (about 1925–d. 1943)

New York. Century Association. "Italian Primitive Paintings," February 15–March 12, 1930, no. 21 (as by Masolino or a close follower, lent by M. F. Griggs) [see Zeri and Gardner 1971].

Art Institute of Chicago. "A Century of Progress," June 1–November 1, 1933, no. 89 (as by Masolino, lent by Maitland F. Griggs).

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Florentine Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum," June 15–August 15, 1971, no catalogue.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence 1300–1450," November 17, 1994–February 26, 1995, no. 46 (as Attributed to Fra Angelico).

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Fra Angelico," October 26, 2005–January 29, 2006, no. 8 (as by Fra Angelico).

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "A New Look at a Van Eyck Masterpiece," January 25–April 24, 2016, no catalogue.

Madrid. Museo Nacional del Prado. "Fra Angelico y los inicios del Renacimiento en Florencia," May 28–September 15, 2019, no. 14.

Brisbane. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art. "European Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York," June 12–October 17, 2021, unnumbered cat.

Osaka. Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts. "European Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York," November 13, 2021–January 16, 2022.

Tokyo. National Art Center. "European Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York," February 9–May 30, 2022.

Giovanni Rosini. Storia della pittura italiana esposta coi monumenti. Supplement, Pisa, 1847, pl. 198 (engraving), as in the Vallardi collection, Milan; attributes it to an unknown fourteenth-century painter.

Antonio Muñoz. Pièces de choix de la collection du comte Grégoire Stroganoff. Vol. 2, Moyen-Âge—Renaissance—Époque Moderne. Rome, 1911, p. 15, pl. VIII, ascribes it to Giottino.

Raimond van Marle. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. Vol. 3, The Florentine School of the 14th Century. The Hague, 1924, p. 421 n. 1.

Raimond van Marle. Letter. February 1, 1926, attributes it to Pietro Lorenzetti or perhaps Ambrogio Lorenzetti painting under Pietro's influence.

Lionello Venturi. "Contributi a Masolino, a Lorenzo Salimbeni e a Jacopo Bellini." L'arte 33 (March 1930), pp. 165–66, fig. 1, considers it an early work of Masolino and notes the influence of Lorenzo Monaco.

Lionello Venturi. Pitture italiane in America. Milan, 1931, unpaginated, pl. CLV, as by Masolino.

Bernhard Berenson. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Oxford, 1932, p. 494, lists it as by Rossello di Jacopo Franchi.

Mario Salmi. Masaccio. Rome, [1932], p. 134, rejects the attribution to Masolino and attributes it an anonymous Florentine painter close to Masolino and Arcangelo di Cola da Camerino.

Bernard Berenson. "Quadri senza casa: Il Trecento fiorentino, V." Dedalo 12 (1932), p. 192, ill. p. 191 (detail), tentatively ascribes it to Rossello di Jacopo Franchi.

Lionello Venturi. Italian Paintings in America. Vol. 2, Fifteenth Century Renaissance. New York, 1933, unpaginated, pl. 185.

Richard Offner. "The Mostra del Tesoro di Firenze Sacra—II." Burlington Magazine 63 (October 1933), p. 173, pl. II C, attributes it to an anonymous Florentine painter, calling him the Master of the Griggs Crucifixion and reconstructing his oeuvre and activity.

Mario Salmi. "Aggiunte al Tre e al Quattrocento fiorentino." Rivista d'arte 16 (1934), pp. 178, 180, accepts Offner's [see Ref. 1933] attribution to the Master of the Griggs Crucifixion.

Hans Tietze. Meisterwerke europäischer Malerei in Amerika. Vienna, 1935, p. 326, pl. 41 [English ed., "Masterpieces of European Painting in America," New York, 1939, p. 310, pl. 41], attributes it to Masolino.

Alfred M. Frankfurter. "The Maitland F. Griggs Collection." Art News 35 (May 1, 1937), p. 30, ill. p. 39.

Charles Sterling. La peinture française: Les primitifs. Paris, 1938, p. 151 n. 50, observes its relationship to the work of the Limbourg brothers; dates it about 1400–1410.

Georg Pudelko. "The Maestro del Bambino Vispo." Art in America 26 (April 1938), p. 63 n. 31, accepts Offner's grouping of pictures ascribed to the Master of the Griggs Crucifixion.

Roberto Longhi. "Fatti di Masolino e di Masaccio." Critica d'arte, part 2, 25–26 (July–December 1940), p. 185 n. 22, accepts Offner's grouping of pictures ascribed to the Master of the Griggs Crucifixion.

Francis Henry Taylor. "The Maitland F. Griggs Collection." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 2 (January 1944), ill. p. 157, as from the workshop of Masolino.

Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 64.

Bernard Berenson. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School. London, 1963, vol. 1, p. 193, pl. 547, tentatively attributes it to Rossello di Jacopo.

M[iklós]. Boskovits, M[iklós]. Mojzer, and A[ndrás]. Mucsi. Das Christliche Museum von Esztergom (Gran). Budapest, 1965, p. 28, under no. 4, note similarities between the style of Rossello di Jacopo and the Master of the Griggs Crucifixion, suggesting the two may have worked in the same shop.

Luciano Bellosi. "Il Maestro della Crocifissione Griggs: Giovanni Toscani." Paragone 17 (March 1966), pp. 44, 57, identifies the Master of the Griggs Crucifixion as Giovanni Toscani and dates this work to his late period, observing the influence of both Gentile da Fabriano and Fra Angelico.

Bernard Berenson. Homeless Paintings of the Renaissance. Ed. Hanna Kiel. Bloomington, 1970, pp. 150–51, 250, fig. 266 (detail) [same text as Ref. Berenson 1932 (Dedalo)].

Federico Zeri with the assistance of Elizabeth E. Gardner. Italian Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Florentine School. New York, 1971, pp. 75–77, ill., attribute it to Giovanni Toscani, finding elements reminiscent of Masolino, Lorenzo Monaco, and late Gothic sculpture.

Everett Fahy. "Florentine Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum: An Exhibition and a Catalogue." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 29 (June 1971), p. 433, ill., attributes it to Giovanni Toscani.

Edmund P. Pillsbury. Florence and the Arts: Five Centuries of Patronage. Exh. cat., Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, 1971, unpaginated, under no. 4, attributes it to Giovanni Toscani.

Federico Zeri. Italian Paintings in the Walters Art Gallery. Baltimore, 1976, vol. 1, p. 29.

Charles Sterling. "Jan van Eyck avant 1432." Revue de l'art no. 33 (1976), p. 80 n. 116, accepts Berenson's [see Ref. 1932] attribution to Rossello di Jacopo.

Marvin Eisenberg. "'The Penitent St Jerome' by Giovanni Toscani." Burlington Magazine 118 (May 1976), pp. 276, 279–80, figs. 13, 14, 17, 19 (overall and details), compares it to a panel of Saint Jerome in the Princeton University Art Museum, attributing both works to Giovanni Toscani.

Hugh Brigstocke. Italian and Spanish Paintings in the National Gallery of Scotland. [Edinburgh], 1978, p. 172, finds the attribution to Giovanni Toscani convincing.

Luciano Bellosi in Arte in Lombardia tra Gotico e Rinascimento. Exh. cat., Palazzo Reale. Milan, 1988, p. 196, relates this work and the Princeton Saint Jerome to the early activity of Fra Angelico, rejecting the attribution to Giovanni Toscani.

Andrea De Marchi in Pittura di luce: Giovanni di Francesco e l'arte fiorentina di metà Quattrocento. Ed. Luciano Bellosi. Exh. cat., Casa Buonarroti, Florence. Milan, 1990, p. 85, suggests that it may be an early work by Fra Angelico.

Carl Brandon Strehlke in Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence 1300–1450. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1994, pp. 31, 42, 324–26, no. 46, ill. (color), as attributed to Fra Angelico; dates it about 1424–25, when Angelico's style was closest to that of Gentile da Fabriano; states that the group of figures around the fainting Virgin may derive from a prototype by Arcangelo di Cola da Camerino; suggests it was the center of a triptych or part of a diptych, possibly opposite the Adoration of the Magi in the Abegg-Stiftung, Riggisberg.

Miklós Boskovits. Immagini da meditare: ricerche su dipinti di tema religioso nei secoli XII-XV. Milan, 1994, p. 365 n. 46, figs. 266, 268 (overall and detail), accepts the attribution to Fra Angelico; dates it about 1415–20.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 15, ill.

John T. Spike. Angelico. Milan, 1996, p. 263, no. 137, ill., rejects the attribution to Fra Angelico.

Graham Hughes. Renaissance Cassoni, Masterpieces of Early Italian Art: Painted Marriage Chests 1400–1550. Alfriston, England, 1997, pp. 188, 208, 224.

Giorgio Bonsanti. Beato Angelico. Florence, 1998, pp. 115–16, no. 8, ill. pp. 23–24 (color, overall and detail), believes it was painted by two different artists, attributing the crucified Christ and background figures to Fra Angelico.

Laurence B. Kanter in Rediscovering Fra Angelico: A Fragmentary History. Exh. cat., Yale University Art Gallery. New Haven, 2001, pp. 19, 37 n. 6, fig. 3, calls it "one of Fra Angelico's earliest masterpieces".

Luciano Bellosi in Masaccio e le origini del Rinascimento. Ed. Luciano Bellosi. Exh. cat., Casa Masaccio, San Giovanni Valdarno. Milan, 2002, p. 46, fig. 43 (detail).

Giorgio Bonsanti in Masaccio e le origini del Rinascimento. Ed. Luciano Bellosi. Exh. cat., Casa Masaccio, San Giovanni Valdarno. Milan, 2002, p. 172.

Carl Brandon Strehlke. "The Princeton 'Penitent Saint Jerome,' the Gaddi Family, and Early Fra Angelico." Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 62 (2003), pp. 21, 23–24 nn. 110–11, figs. 22, 24 (overall and detail), attributes it to Fra Angelico and dates it about 1420–22; relates the figure of Christ to that in a "Crucifixion with Saints Dominic and Thomas Aquinas" (Santa Maria Novella, Florence) and a "Crucifix" (Saibene collection, Milan), both of which he attributes to Angelico and dates slightly earlier than the MMA work; publishes the inscription on the horse's bridle reading "frater Johannes", noting that it could be either the artist's signature or a reference to the owner; remarks that the painting is the right size and subject matter to have been made as a devotional picture for a monastic cell and that it may be one of Angelico's first surviving works for a Dominican patron.

Carl Brandon Strehlke. Italian Paintings 1250–1450 in the John G. Johnson Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Philadelphia, 2004, p. 417.

Laurence Kanter in Fra Angelico. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2005, pp. 11–12, 50, 52–54, 56, 77, no. 8, ill. (color), attributes it to Fra Angelico and relates it to the artist's high altarpiece for San Domenico, which he dates 1420–21; believes it probably originally served as the central pinnacle of an altarpiece.

Pia Palladino in Fra Angelico. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2005, p. 34, includes it among works "now almost unanimously regarded as autograph products of Angelico's early years".

Lorenzo Sbaraglio in Gentile da Fabriano and the Other Renaissance. Ed. Laura Laureati and Lorenza Mochi Onori. Exh. cat., Spedale di Santa Maria del Buon Gesù, Fabriano. Milan, 2006, p. 278 [Italian ed., "Gentile da Fabriano e l'altro Rinascimento"], mentions it as "today recognized as the work of the young Fra Angelico".

Giorgio Bonsanti in Beato Angelico: L'alba del Rinascimento. Ed. Alessandro Zuccari et al. Exh. cat., Musei Capitolini, Rome. Milan, 2009, p. 27, fig. 4 (color), reiterates his attribution [see Ref. 1998] to Fra Angelico and his belief that the five foreground figures are by a different hand; dates it about 1423.

Mara Minasi in Beato Angelico: L'alba del Rinascimento. Ed. Alessandro Zuccari et al. Exh. cat., Musei Capitolini, Rome. Milan, 2009, p. 148, under no. 2, mentions that it is now attributed to Fra Angelico.

Laurence Kanter in Italian Paintings from the Richard L. Feigen Collection. Ed. Laurence Kanter and John Marciari. Exh. cat., Yale University Art Gallery. New Haven, 2010, p. 73, under no. 21.

Aldo Galli in The Alana Collection. Ed. Miklós Boskovits. Vol. 2, Italian Paintings and Sculptures from the Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century. Florence, 2011, pp. 135, 138.

Giorgia Mancini and Nicholas Penny. The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings. Vol. 3, Bologna and Ferrara. London, 2016, pp. 200–201, identify it as a Crucifixion, then attributed to Squarcione, mentioned in a letter from Alessandro Palagi to his uncle Pelagio Palagi dated February 13, 1844 listing four paintings that belonged to his father that he was about to send to Count d'Arache; propose that all four paintings "were sold to, or through, Vallardi".

Mauro Minardi. Paolo Uccello. Milan, 2017, pp. 36, 38, 68 n. 53, fig. 16 (color), relates it to a "Crucifixion" attributed to the young Uccello (art market, London).

Carl Brandon Strehlke in Fra Angelico: Heaven on Earth. Ed. Nathaniel Silver. Exh. cat., Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Boston, 2018, pp. 62–63, 73 n. 27, fig. 43 (color), dates it about 1418–19; states that the figure of Christ is based on Brunelleschi's polychrome wood crucifix in Santa Maria Novella, Florence (possibly ca. 1410–20).

Carl Brandon Strehlke in Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance. Exh. cat., Museo Nacional del Prado. Madrid, 2019, pp. 24, 96, 110, 123, no. 14, ill. p. 111 (color), dates it about 1418–20.

Nathaniel Silver. "Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance." Burlington Magazine 161 (September 2019), p. 754.

Master Paintings & Sculpture Part I. Sotheby's, New York. January 28, 2021, p. 34, under no. 5.

Katharine Baetjer in European Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Exh. cat., Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art. South Brisbane, 2021, pp. 58, 230, ill. pp. 59–61 (color, overall and detail).

Chris Saines in European Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Exh. cat., Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art. South Brisbane, 2021, pp. 39–40, 42, ill. (color details).