Maestro della Croce 432

This artist has no name. He is called the Master of the Cross 432 after a single object, a large painted crucifix that carries the inventory number 432 in the Uffizi, given when the gallery began cataloguing its holdings in 1890. Where a signature would be, scholars put the work itself.

Nothing of his life is recorded, which was normal for the time, when a Tuscan panel-painter counted as an anonymous craftsman rather than a named artist.

The cross is Pisan, painted in the early 13th century, and it is probably the oldest painting the Uffizi owns. It shows Christ upright and open-eyed, the type called Christus Triumphans, Christ triumphant over death, with small scenes of the Passion running down both sides of the body.