Crucifixion

Around 1350 Florence was recovering from the Black Death, the plague that had carried off much of the city two years before. In those years one family workshop led Florentine painting: the sons of Cione, among them Nardo and his better-known brother, known as Orcagna. This Crucifixion is the central panel of a small tabernacle, a folding altar kept for private prayer, with tiny saints ranged along the base. The manner is deliberately grave and old-fashioned even for its moment, the bodies firm and the gold ground flat, a style Florentine painters leaned back into after the upheaval. Christ hangs at the centre, the mourners gathered close below.