The Crucifixion

The clue to who this altarpiece was for sits in the roundels along the bottom. Next to the Virgin and Child are two monks in white, Saint Benedict, whose Rule the Cistercians followed, and Saint Bernard, their most celebrated abbot. Women also take unusual space. Mary Magdalene, in red with long red hair, holds up the collapsing Virgin, and female saints fill the outer roundels. So the National Gallery suggests it was painted around 1369 or 1370 for Santa Maria Maddalena di Cestello in Florence, a Cistercian convent of nuns dedicated to the Magdalene, patron of women who had turned from a sinful life. Above, angels catch Christ's blood in cups, and while angels carry off the soul of one thief, haloed, devils with a brazier torment the other's. The Reverend Jarvis Holland Ash, a clergyman, left it to the Gallery in 1896.