Christ on the Cross

Around 1312 or 1313 a notary and chronicler from Ferrara, Riccobaldo, wrote down where the Florentine painter Giotto had worked, and one of the places he named was the Franciscan church at Rimini. The museum dates this small panel to before those years. The Crucifixion was once one scene in a row of seven from the life of Christ, all painted on a single long board that stood behind an altar. The museum points out that this stretched-out kind of altarpiece was rare in Florence but common in Emilia-Romagna, and details in the scenes point to Rimini, where the ruling Malatesta family had engaged Giotto for their church of San Francesco. The board was later cut into separate pictures. Munich owns three of the scenes, and King Max I Joseph of Bavaria bought this one in 1813 from Count Lucchesi.