Crucifixion

For a long time this small Crucifixion hung in the Uffizi under another name. It came in attributed to Spinello Aretino, a Tuscan painter of the same generation, and stayed that way until 1906, when the scholar Osvald Siren recognised it instead as an early work by the young Agnolo Gaddi. Look at the cross itself. The horizontal beam is oddly long and the upright short, so Christ's feet hang almost at the level of the ground, close to the mourners gathered below. Saint John, on one side, grips his heavy cloak with one hand and points up to the body with the other, his head tilted, a small gesture that turns up again and again in Gaddi's painting. It was made in tempera and gold near the end of the 14th century, in Florence.