Kreuzigung Christi (Kopie nach dem Altarbild der Münchner Augustinerkirche) (Kopie nach)

This small panel copy of Tintoretto's Crucifixion for the Munich Augustinian church, dated around 1556 and preserved in the Bavarian State Painting Collections, documents a now-inaccessible or altered original through the tradition of reproductive copying that was essential to the dissemination of major works before photography. The Augustinian church in Munich (now the Michaelskirche area) held significant Italian altarpieces acquired through Jesuit and court patronage in the sixteenth century, and a Tintoretto Crucifixion for this location would have been a prestigious commission reflecting Munich's aspiration to compete culturally with the great Italian centers. Tintoretto painted multiple Crucifixion subjects across his career, with the vast canvas in the Sala dell'Albergo at the Scuola di San Rocco (1565) being his greatest treatment of the subject. These secondary versions and copies occupied an important function in spreading knowledge of his compositional innovations: the radical foreshortening, the dramatic light from below, the tightly packed multi-figure compression that distinguished his Crucifixions from the more spread and didactic treatments typical of the previous generation.

The copy preserves the dramatic compositional arrangement of Tintoretto's original, with the characteristic dark palette and theatrical lighting effects. The handling, while competent, shows the more careful, deliberate brushwork typical of copyists working from an original, lacking the spontaneous energy of Tintoretto's own rapid execution.