The Crucifixion

The scroll at the right carries the words Amor meus crucifixus est, my love is crucified. They come from a letter by Ignatius of Antioch, an early bishop taken to Rome to be martyred, and the Rijksmuseum's Dutch record names the two standing saints at the right as John and Ignatius. Another of the museum's records suggests John the Baptist and, with a question mark, Ambrose, so who stands there is still an open question. The rest is clearer. Mary Magdalene and the Virgin stand at the left, Saint Francis kneels and embraces the cross, and two angels catch Christ's blood in chalices. The panel is small, about half a metre high, and was painted around 1360. When the Swiss surgeon Otto Lanz owned it in Amsterdam it passed as a work of Agnolo Gaddi. His widow sold it in 1941 for the museum Hitler planned at Linz, and it was recovered after the war.