Mond Crucifixion

Raphael painted this altarpiece around 1502, when he was still a teenager and barely started. It was made for a wool merchant's burial chapel in Citta di Castello, a small town in Umbria, and the hills behind the cross are that same countryside. Everything here is calm and gentle. Two angels catch Christ's blood in cups, and Mary and John stand quietly wringing their hands rather than collapsing in grief. That serenity comes straight from Perugino, the older master Raphael was working beside in these years. Vasari, writing later, said that if Raphael had not signed it, no one would have believed it was not simply a Perugino. Look up and you can find the sun and the moon Raphael set in the sky, the eclipse said to fall at Christ's death.