Crucifixion

In 1436 Jacopo Bellini was in Verona, at work on a chapel in the cathedral. He covered it with frescoes, among them a large Crucifixion crowded with figures, and all of it was destroyed in the 18th century. The museum believes this canvas, which also came from the cathedral, was probably painted during that same stay. Other scholars place it later in his career, and the question is still open.

Whenever it was made, it is the opposite of a crowded scene. It is very tall, more than three metres high, and almost empty. Christ hangs alone, his body nearly luminous against a flat field of blue that stands in for the sky, and the museum points out that nothing decorative is allowed in. For Verona in those years, still in love with the ornate late Gothic manner, it calls the picture modern, almost polemical. A skull lies at the foot of the cross, the traditional sign of Adam's grave on Golgotha.