Painted Cross
Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337) · c. 1300-1325
Nearly three metres high, this cross was made to hang above the entrance to a choir or on a rood beam, seen from below by the whole congregation. Christ hangs dead on the cross, his body curving gently under its own weight, the head fallen to one side, the ribs and the belly modelled in soft light against the gold ground. At the ends of the crossbar stand the mourning Virgin, on the left, and Saint John the Evangelist, on the right, in half length. At the top, in the projecting terminal, a pelican tears its breast to feed its young, the traditional symbol of Christ's sacrifice.
The cross is attributed to Giotto and dated to the first quarter of the fourteenth century, in the years after his frescoes at Padua. Compare the body with the stiff, stylised Christ of earlier Tuscan crucifixes: here the weight is real, the flesh is shaded, the loincloth is transparent, and the grief of the two mourners is quietly human. The panel came from the collection of the Marquis Campana in Rome, bought by the French state in eighteen sixty one after the collector's bankruptcy, and entered the Louvre in eighteen sixty three.
Did You Know? The pelican at the top of the cross was believed to feed its young with blood from its own breast, a medieval image of Christ's sacrifice.
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