Three-Figure Crucifixion

Only one of the four Gospels, John's, places the mother of Jesus at the foot of the cross together with the disciple he loved. From the cross, that Gospel says, Jesus gave them to each other, telling her, behold your son, and him, behold your mother. This panel keeps the scene to just those three. It is small, about 24 by 19 centimetres, painted on beech by an unnamed Viennese painter around 1430. Mary stands wrapped in a blue-green mantle edged with gold, one hand at her breast. John, young and curly-haired, in green, leans his cheek into his palm. Between them, blood runs from Christ's feet down the wood onto a pale lump of rock. A Viennese art dealer, the Galerie St. Lucas, gave the panel to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1927.