The Crucifixion

In 1387 and 1388 a Florentine named Bernardo di Cino Bartolini dei Nobili paid for an altarpiece for his family chapel in Santa Maria degli Angeli, the Camaldolese monastery in Florence. The main panels, the Virgin and Child with angels and four standing saints, went to Agnolo Gaddi, the most established painter in the city, and they are now in Berlin. The strip of small scenes along the bottom, the predella, was given to a young painter who had not yet entered that monastery as a monk, the future Lorenzo Monaco. This Crucifixion was its centre. He packs the hill with riders and soldiers, and in the foreground the Virgin sinks into the arms of the holy women. Other pieces of the same strip survive elsewhere, a Baptism of Christ in the National Gallery in London, and a panel showing the donor's wife, Piera degli Albizzi, with their four daughters, in a private collection.