Triptych of the crucifixion of Christ

These three fresco fragments once sat out in the open on a wayside tabernacle at Boldrone, a little shrine at a crossroads on the edge of Florence, where travellers passed and said a prayer. Pontormo painted them as a young man in the early 1520s, around the years plague drove him and other Florentines out of the crowded city. Scholars still argue over the exact date. For a long time the Crucifixion at the centre, flanked by two standing saints, weathered rain and sun at that roadside spot. Only much later were the frescoes cut from the wall and brought indoors to save what remained, which is why the surfaces look so thinned and ghostly now.