In a sketchy rugged landscape the Crucifix, Holy Mother and St John stand out almost to their full height against a gleaming gold background. The condition of the painted surface is satisfactory, although its uniformity is marred by widespread craquelure, especially in the upper part, some scratches and a deeper vertical slit on the right of Christ. The mantle and green robe of St John the Baptist - a shade obtained with a delicate translucent varnish - seem to be original, while Mary’s mantle is encumbered by repainting carried out in a later period. The nimbuses are decorated with stamped rosettes and with subtle stippling all around, which appears unfinished in some places. 

Originally, the small panel terminated in a pointed arch and the triangular elements inserted to reduce it to a squarer shape after the lower part had been cut are still visible. Strips of wood have been added to all four sides to strengthen the panel following its manipulation, but well before it was placed in the present antique frame.

The first known whereabouts of the work was in the Pisan collection of Carlo Lasinio, conservator of the monuments in Piazza dei Miracoli from 1802 until his death in 1838. This is attested by the elegant wax seal on the back of the panel, accompanied by a small label on which is written in ink “Cav. Carlo Lasinio Conservatore del Camposanto, e Direttore dell’I. Accademia delle Belle Arti di Pisa”, to which has been added, later, in another hand, above: “comprato […] Conte N. Esterhaziy [sic] dalla raccolta del”, and below “[pittore] fiorentino - 1300 dip.” The small panel remained in the Esterhazy Collection until 1970, when it was sold with an attribution to the Florentine school of c. 1360.¹ Documented at Leegenhoek in Paris the following year,² in around 1980 it was in the Milanese collection of Marino Dall’Oglio,³ before reappearing on the London market,⁴ and subsequently entering the Cerruti Collection. 

Miklós Boskovits was the first to recognise the hand of Giuliano di Simone in the small Turin fragment, as stated by González-Palacios,⁵ who identified it as the crowning element of the Madonna and Child between Angels and Saints, and Eve with the Serpent in the Louvre (inv. no. M.I.407). A work that also belonged to Lasinio (the same wax seal is present on the back),⁶ then entered the collection of Marquis Campana (fig. 1).⁷ 

The relationship between the two panels was questioned by Linda Pisani,⁸ who detected a discrepancy in Giuliano’s style, which in the Crucifixion is strongly influenced by Spinello Aretino. However, the fact that both works were in the Lasinio Collection,⁹ and a comparison with Di Simone’s identical panel of the Madonna and Child between Angels and Saints, and Eve with the Serpent and Crucifixion (still intact) in the Galleria Nazionale in Parma (inv. no. 443), leave no room for other hypotheses. Moreover, the Madonna in Paris also displays close links with the work of Spinello Aretino in Lucca between 1380 and c. 1385, namely the dense shadows on the faces, the deep folds of the robes, and the striving for a clear yet controlled expressiveness. These are also the distinctive features of the intense Cerruti Crucifixion, which is therefore to be dated to the most successful period in the career of this minor Lucca master, that is, around 1385.¹⁰ 

Here the hyper-decorativeness that characterises the twin panel in Parma, which is to be assigned to a slightly earlier period, gives way to a more solemn and monumental sensibility, despite the small format. The orchestration of the space is also more complex, especially in the lower section where the musician angels are partly hidden behind the drapery of the throne, whose clearly delineated steps generate the space occupied by the saints around Mary. In the Crucifixion there is a pentimento at bottom left, where the rocks are painted on the gold, perhaps in order to raise the level of the horizon and place Mary in a more concrete dimension; while the guiding incision at the base of the cross shows that the suppedaneum must originally have been wider, that is, more acutely foreshortened. Both the Parma panel and Louvre- Cerruti work are modelled on the altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with Saints - now in the Lindenau-Museum in Altenburg - by Angelo Puccinelli,¹¹ who was probably responsible for introducing in Lucca the iconography of Eve with the Serpent, which was widespread in the Siena area, starting from Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s fresco at Montesiepi (Angelo is documented in Siena until 1382).¹² The theme’s success in Lucca is attested by a panel by the Master of San Davino in a private collection in Florence, which dates to the first decade of the 15th century.¹³ 

[Giovanni Giura]

1 Christie’s 1970.

2 González-Palacios 1971.

3 Florence, Archivio del Corpus della pittura fiorentina, Fondo Boskovits, Giuliano di Simone.

4 Christie’s 1987.

5 González-Palacios 1971, p. 51 note 9.

6 Laclotte-Mognetti 1976, np. note 3. For a summary of the history of the Louvre panel, see D. Thiébaut in Paris 2007, p. 32.

7 Cataloghi del Museo Campana 1859, VIII, p. 16, cat. 136, as “Simone Memmi”.

8 Pisani 1998, p. 183.

9 On works that belonged to Lasinio and his having no qualms about dividing polyptychs and painted panels to put them on the market, see Levi 1993, where the Calvary that surmounted the Louvre panel is stated as being a different piece to the one in the Cerruti Collection (p. 147, app. III.1, no. 7); see also É. Mognetti, in Paris 2018, p. 358.

10 For an overview on Giuliano di Simone’s art, see Labriola 2001.

11 A. De Marchi, “Angelo Puccinelli”, in Lucca 1998, p. 151; Pisani 1998, p. 183; S. Weppelmann, in Altenburg 2008, p. 229, cat. 44.

12 For a list of attestations of the theme, see Dunlop 2002, p. 131 note 2.

13 A. Labriola, in Lucca 1998, pp. 240-241.