The Crucifixion

This is a characteristic work by one of the more productive Sienese masters in the orbit of Duccio di Buoninsegna, who was subsequently influenced by Simone Martini and Ugolino di Nerio. Active in the opening decades of the trecento, the master takes his name from the Maestà in the monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore, east of Siena, which G. de Nicola associated with a number of other pictures in 1912. His oeuvre has subsequently been considerably enlarged by Cesare Brandi, to whom his soubriquet is due, and Gertrude Coor-Achenbach, James Stubblebine and other scholars. Stubblebine (Duccio di Buoninsegna and his School, Princeton, 1979, I, p. 92) believed his was ‘a one-man operation’ and that there was ‘insufficient evidence’ that he ‘had assistance’. In design, this panel conforms closely with the treatment of the figure in a series of representations of the crucifixion by the master (op. cit., II, figs. 219, 211, 213, 214 and 217), but such details as the diagonal folds of the loincloth distinguish it from these.