Niccolo Baroncelli?

(doc. 1434-1453)

Christ crucified, c. 1450

Carved and sculpted wood

Museo Schifanoia, inv. OA1731

Fortuitously rediscovered in 2003 during restoration work in the church of San Cristoforo alla Certosa, the large Crucified Christ is a work of extraordinary quality and uncommon expressive power. Although it is impossible to reconstruct the original provenance, the unusual length of the chest and arms (repositioned at the correct angle thanks to the 2007 restoration) and the shrunken extension of the lower limbs allow one to speculate on its placement above the structure of an iconostasis or in a large altar. Yet, despite the privileged vantage point from below, therefore distant from the observer, the carver did not neglect the creation of numerous details that bring the sculpture closer to the Crucifix bronze part of the complex group in Ferrara Cathedral, made between 1451 and 1456 by Nicolò Baroncelli and Domenico di Paris. As in the cathedral work, here too the very human suffering of Christ, unlike Donatello’s more composed model for the Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua-which the anonymous carver was certainly familiar with-is emphasized by the blood-swollen veins in his legs and arms. The Christ Crucified can be placed chronologically not too far from 1454, the year in which the sculptural group by Baroncelli and Paris was put in place, and constitutes, along with the Crucifix of the Ferrara Seminary, an interesting response to the bronze compositions of the Paduan style.