Crucifixion

In 1335 Azzone Visconti brought Giotto to Milan to paint his palace. Every trace of that work is gone, and what remains of its effect has to be looked for in the painters who saw it. This Crucifixion is one of those traces, made about 30 years later on the end wall of a small private chapel at Mocchirolo, north of Milan, by a man whose name has not come down to us.

What he took from the Tuscan example was bulk and gesture. Christ hangs at the centre with John the Evangelist and Mary Magdalene below him, the Virgin giving way into the arms of the women holding her up, and angels in the air carrying the instruments of the Passion.

This was the largest thing in the room. The chapel was a single hall with a small vaulted presbytery, and this wall closed it off. The other painted walls of that presbytery now stand beside it at Brera.