Crocifissione di Cristo

Filippino Lippi painted this Crucifixion in Florence around 1500, in a city still shaken by the friar Girolamo Savonarola, who had preached against worldly art and luxury and been burned in the main square in 1498. In those years Florentine painters turned back toward plainer, more fervent religious images, and that mood settles over devotional works like this one. Lippi, the son of the painter Fra Filippo Lippi, was near the end of his career. He died in 1504, and the city reportedly closed its workshops for the day to mark his funeral.