Crucifixion with the Virgin Mary and St. John the Evangelist

In 1811 two Crivelli panels arrived in Milan together, taken from the cathedral of Camerino during the Napoleonic requisitions that were stocking the new gallery at Brera. One was the Madonna known as the Candeletta. The other was this Crucifixion. Because they came from the same building, measured comparably and used the same steep viewpoint, curators treated them for well over a century as parts of one dismantled altarpiece. More recent study has pulled them apart again. The entry registers give the Madonna different measurements, and the two panels differ in their grounds and in handling. This one is now read as a cimasa, the crowning panel that sat at the top. That is why the cross is drawn as it is, tilted for an eye far below it. Behind Christ the picture splits down the middle, half hill country with a castle, half flat gold holding the sun and the moon.