The crucifixion of Christ with Saints

The Crucifixion of Christ with Saints, at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, shows the central event of Christian redemption flanked by the saints who most directly participated in or witnessed the Passion. Painted around 1440, this panel by Stefan Lochner belongs to the Cologne tradition of Crucifixion panels whose primary devotional purpose was to invoke prayerful meditation on Christ's sacrifice. The Germanisches Nationalmuseum holds major works of German art from the medieval period through modernity.

Christ is depicted on the cross at the center, his body rendered with the stylized anatomical convention of Cologne painting—elongated, graceful, and relatively free of the graphic suffering found in contemporaneous German art farther east. The flanking saints are shown in calm devotional postures, their gestures of grief measured and decorous rather than expressively contorted.