Artwork · 14th century · Pietro Lorenzetti

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The Crucifixion

Pietro Lorenzetti1340sTempera and gold leaf on wood41.9 × 31.8 cm

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At a glance

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Three crosses stand against a golden sky, and below them a fainting Mary, mourners, and soldiers on horseback crowd together.
Pietro Lorenzetti, a painter from Siena in Italy, made it in the 1340s in tempera and gold leaf on wood.
The painted part is only about 36 centimeters tall, yet more than twenty people and several horses are packed into it.

Reading the picture

5 places to look closer

Tap a number on the painting to jump to its note, or a close-up to see that spot in the whole picture.

Zoom in on the side of Christ in the middle. Red blood spurts in streams from the spear wound. The cloth around his hips is so thin you can see through it, and gold patterns are drawn across it.
Look at the cross on the left. This is one of the two criminals crucified with Jesus, yet he has a golden halo. He is the one who, in the Gospel story, asked Jesus to remember him. The halo and the border beside it are covered with tiny circles and flowers, stamped into the gold one by one with small punches.
Move down below the cross on the right. A soldier in red raises a heavy club. The Gospel of John says the soldiers broke the legs of the two criminals. Here that brutal moment is about to happen under a golden sky.
Zoom in on Mary in her blue cloak at the lower left. Her eyes are half shut and her body has gone limp. A figure in red holds her up from behind. A gold star shines on Mary's head and another on her shoulder.
Look at the horses at the lower right. A brown horse and a white horse bow their heads, their bridles hung with gold ornaments and tassels. They have pushed right in beside the grieving group, on bare ground.

When it was painted

In 1320, the bishop of Arezzo hired Pietro Lorenzetti to paint a large altarpiece for the high altar of the church of Santa Maria in that town. The contract still survives. It tells us that by then people outside his home city of Siena were already seeking him out.

He also painted the story of Christ's Passion on the walls of the church of San Francesco at Assisi. Back in Siena, he and his younger brother Ambrogio were both leading painters. In 1342 he signed and dated The Birth of the Virgin, an altarpiece for Siena Cathedral. It is the last dated work we have from him.

After the mid-1340s, Pietro's name disappears from the records. This little Crucifixion comes from those final years. And it was not made to stand alone. The Metropolitan Museum believes it was one panel of a small portable altarpiece that told the Passion in several scenes.

Only one other panel from that set is known today: Christ before Pilate, in the Vatican Museums. The first person to put Pietro's name on this picture was the Italian art historian Federico Zeri. He did it in 1986, working from a single photograph a dealer had sent him. The Met bought the panel in 2002.

Now find the small red sign at the very top of the center cross. On a panel only a little bigger than two hands, the painter still lettered it carefully, one pale character at a time.

The painter

Pietro Lorenzetti

1320–1344

All paintings by Pietro Lorenzetti →

The Crucifixion

Questions to think about

Look for itHow many faces with golden halos can you find in the crowd?
Why?Why do you think the painter made the sky of this terrible scene gold instead of dark and stormy?
What about you?Right beside the fainting Mary, a soldier lifts his club and carries on with his orders. When what we are told to do clashes with what is right, which should we follow?

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