Trittico Galitzin (c.1482-1485)

Perugino (c.1446-1523)

Trittico Galitzin (The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John, Saint Jerome, and Saint Mary Magdalene)
c.14821485
Oil on panel transferred to canvas
National Gallery of ArtWashington

Pietro Vannucci, called Perugino after the city in which he often lived, collaborated with other celebrated painters in one of the most prestigious commissions of the late fifteenth century — the decoration of the walls of the Sistine Chapel in 14811482. He headed active workshops in Perugia and Florence, where he would eventually be overshadowed by his greatest pupil, RaphaelPerugino‘s Crucifixion with Saints, painted for a chapel in the Dominican church in San Gimignano near Siena, shows Christ hanging on the cross with Mary and Saint John the Evangelist at his feet. In the two side panels, Saint Jerome with his lion, and Mary Magdalene gaze up at the figure of Christ. However, the work does not attempt to depict the actual event or place, but is a visual meditation on the theme of the Crucifixion. The serene mood is reflected in the landscape, which also reveals the influence of Flemish painting which had recently been introduced into Florence. From the late seventeenth to the early twentieth century Perugino‘s Crucifixion was thought to be the work of his pupil Raphael. When it was discovered that the donor of the triptych died in 1497, when Raphael would have been only fourteen, Perugino‘s authorship once again became clear.

One tall, rectangular panel is flanked by arched panels to each side, all set within a carved, painted, gilded wooden frame. The central panel shows two people at the foot of a wooden cross, to which a man is nailed, and the panels to each side are each occupied by a single person. All the people have pale skin and are shown against landscapes with rocky outcroppings along a river that extends into the deep distance. At the center of the middle panel, the man hangs from the cross from nails in his hands and one nail driven through his overlapping feet. He is nude except for the white loincloth wrapped around his hips, which falls in fluttering ripples alongside his right leg, on our left. Blood drips down his forehead from where a ring of thorns encircles his shoulder-length, chestnut-brown hair. His head tilts to his right, our left, and his eyes are closed or downcast. Blood also drips from his hands and feet, and from a slit over his right ribcage. The woman standing to our left of the cross wears a navy-blue robe edged in gold that covers her head and drapes to her ankles above bare feet. Her head tips down to our right, and she holds her hands clasped loosely, fingers intertwined, at her waist. The person standing to our right of the cross wears a cobalt-blue robe under a vivid, scarlet-red cloak. He has blond curly hair and delicate features, like the woman. With arms nearly straight, he holds his interlaced fingers with palms facing down, close to his body. He looks up at the man on the cross. Low hills dotted with flowers and plants separate the people from a river that runs between rocky hills and outcroppings. Stone buildings line the bank beyond a bridge spanning the river in the distance, and three boats sail near the horizon line, which comes halfway up the composition. The hills and mountains look green and then blue in the deep distance under a sky that fades from nearly white along the horizon to pale, topaz blue along the top edge of the panel, which is also lined with clouds. In the panel to our left, a balding man with gray hair leans on a wooden staff like a crutch, nearly in profile facing our right. He also is nude aside from a slate-gray cloth that wraps around his hips. He holds his loosely fisted right hand up to his chest. A lion stands in front of a cave entrance behind the man. In the panel to our right, a woman wears a mauve-pink dress under a pine-green cloak. She holds her hands clasped with fingers interlaced at her abdomen. A small, gold-colored jar with handles sits on a rock to our left. Both the man and woman in the side panels look up toward the man on the cross. The landscape behind those in the side panels enclose each scene with rocky outcroppings that seem closer to us than the landscape in the central panel. More plants and flowers, and also trees, dot each landscape and soften the caramel-brown boulders with touches of moss and emerald green. The frame encasing the panels is carved and gilded gold around strips of aquamarine blue, which are painted with swirling tendrils, vines, urns, shells, animals, and some mask-like faces. (NGA)

This triptych was sold as a work of Raphael to Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Galitzin, Russian ambassador to Rome. In 1931 it was one of the masterpieces sold in a semi-secret deal by Stalin, purchased by the American entrepreneur Andrew W. Mellon, whose collection was the original nucleus, since 1937, of the nascent American museum.

Left panel:

Perugino (c.1446-1523)
San Girolamo
c.14821485
National Gallery of ArtWashington

 

 

Central panel:

Perugino (c.1446-1523)
Crucifixion
c.14821485
National Gallery of ArtWashington

 

 

Right panel:

Perugino (c.1446-1523)
Santa Maria Maddalena
c.14821485
National Gallery of ArtWashington