Crucifixion

Above the two thieves, their souls are being taken away. An angel lifts one soul in a white cloth, while a small dark devil pulls the other out through the second thief's mouth. Their legs are roped to the crosses and already bloodied. Christ hangs between them, and a man at the foot of the cross holds up the sponge on its long pole. Mary has collapsed in her blue robe into the arms of the women, and John stands with his hands clasped. Opposite them a man in red-and-gold brocade points upward, most likely the centurion who, in the Gospels, calls Christ the Son of God. The panel was part of a winged altarpiece painted around 1430, and it still sits in its original frame. It came to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1932 from a private collection in Vienna.