Crucifix 434 with Stories of the Passion of Christ

This is a large painted cross, the kind that once hung high over the altar or the choir screen of a Tuscan church, meant to be read from below by people who could not read words. Christ is shown dead, eyes closed, the body sagging on four nails, in the type that spread through Italy in the 13th century in place of the older upright, open-eyed Christ who seemed to reign from the cross. Down both sides of his body run eight small scenes of the Passion, set in order. On one side the arrest and the torment: before the Sanhedrin, mocked and crowned with thorns, scourged, then the road to Calvary. On the other it continues past the death, with the Deposition, the Entombment, the women meeting the angel who tells them he has risen, and the supper at Emmaus. The whole object works as a single long picture, the crucified figure at its centre and around it the events that framed him, painted in tempera and gold around 1240.