Cima da Conegliano
The Crucifixion
Conegliano, Veneto, about 1488-93
Tempera on wood
82.5 x 115.2 cm
Jesus is crucified in front of his mother, the Virgin Mary, and friend, John. John grimaces in horror, unable to look upon Jesus’s body. The cross stands imposingly at the front of the composition, confronting the viewer with its brutal reality.
The background scenes, completed by Cima’s assistant, depict the moments before Jesus’s death. On the right, Jesus kneels in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, asking God to change his fate. Three of Jesus’s disciples lie asleep around him.
On the left is a building with two open rooms on the upper level. Jesus wears a white gown in each. In the left room, the Roman official, Pontius Pilate, washes his hands of responsibility and leaves Jesus’s fate up to the crowd. In the right room, Jesus is crowned with thorns, which marks the start of his journey to the cross. Beneath this room is a cockerel, a visual reminder of Jesus’s disciple, Peter, who flees the scene on the far left. Before his death, Jesus told Peter that before the cockerel crows, Peter would have disowned Jesus three times.
Cima, born the small town of Conegliano in the Veneto, was a student of Giovanni Bellini. He was famous for his use of Veneto-inspired landscapes in his religious paintings. Here, the moody sky looms over the hilly landscape, creating an atmosphere of hopelessness and grief.
Purchased 1938 (No. 38.4)
Further reading:
Gasparotto, Davide, Giovanni Bellini: Landscapes of Faith in Renaissance Venice, Los Angeles, 2017, pp. 11-24.
Grandi, Loredana, Cima da Conegliano: Poet of the Landscape, Venice, 2010. Available at http://puntoelineamagazine.it/cima-da-conegliano-poet-of-the-landscape/.
Hadeln, D. Baron von., ‘An Unknown Work by Cima da Conegliano’, in The Burlington Magazine, 49/280, 1926, p. 3.
Humfrey, Peter, Cima da Conegliano, Cambridge, 1983, p. 3.
Villa, Giovanni Carlo Federico, Cima da Conegliano: Maitre de la Reniassance venitienne, Luxembourg, 2012, p. 4.
Villa, Giovanni Carlo Federico, Cima da Conegliano: Poeta del Paesaggio, Venice, 2010, p. 48.
