Kreuzigungsgruppe

Lorenzo Veneziano's Kreuzigungsgruppe (Crucifixion Group) belongs to this Venetian painter's production of devotional panels in the Byzantine-influenced Venetian tradition of the mid-fourteenth century. Lorenzo Veneziano was among the leading painters in Venice in the third quarter of the Trecento, developing a style that combined the gold-rich Byzantine inheritance with increasing Gothic naturalism absorbed from Sienese painting. His Crucifixion groups — the three crosses or the three principal figures of Christ, Mary, and John — followed the standard iconographic program while demonstrating the Venetian tradition's particular warmth of color within the gold-ground format.

Tempera and gold leaf on panel. Lorenzo's figures display the elongated proportions and fluid drapery characteristic of International Gothic tendencies, set against a burnished gold ground with fine punchwork decoration in the haloes.