Madonna of the Passion

By 1465 Carlo Crivelli was living in Zara, the Venetian-ruled port on the far side of the Adriatic that is now Zadar in Croatia, and he never worked in Venice again. From the years before that move, this small panel is the one picture that can be given to him with certainty. The museum dates it to around 1460, and he signed it in the capital letters of ancient Roman inscriptions.

It is a Madonna and Child, but everything around them points ahead to the Passion. Small angels hold up the instruments of Christ's suffering, and the landscape behind tells the end of the story, with the Crucifixion in the distance. The museum singles out the details. Jerusalem rises with pointed Gothic towers and figures in Eastern dress. Saint Peter has just cut off a soldier's ear, the episode of Christ's arrest. A vulture sits on a dead tree, a sign of cruelty and death, and a child rides a white horse, which in the imagery of the time stood for immaturity and inconstancy.