Christ Crucified with the Thieves, Saints, and a Female Donor

By 1512 Hans Baldung had settled in Freiburg, and this wide crucifixion panel, close to a metre and a half across, dates from those years. Christ hangs between the two thieves, saints stand below, and the woman who paid for the picture kneels among them in her everyday clothes. Baldung marked the work in an unusual place. On a scroll wrapped around the trunk of the cross he lettered his own name, BALDVNG, and set his monogram, HBG, with the date 1512 just beneath it. He built the support from limewood and glued canvas over it before painting, a way of keeping so broad a surface from cracking. That kneeling donor is the only figure in the scene who belonged to Baldung's own day.