Altarpiece of Saint Martin - The Crucifixion

The Crucifixion panel from the Altarpiece of Saint Martin, painted around 1500 and now in Zaragoza's Goya Museum, is part of a multi-panel altarpiece produced by the Master of Riofrío — an anonymous Spanish painter named after the Castilian town where the work was originally housed. The late fifteenth-century Spanish altarpiece tradition combined Flemish technical influence — absorbed through the extensive Burgundian commercial connections of Castile and Aragon — with local iconographic programmes. The Crucifixion as the altarpiece's central narrative image was standard in Spanish retablo design, flanked by subsidiary scenes from the dedicatory saint's life.

Oil or tempera on panel. Spanish retablo panels of this period combine Flemish-influenced oil technique with an inherited taste for elaborate gilded frames and punched gold grounds. Figure drawing reflects the Hispano-Flemish synthesis — Flemish naturalism in costume and face, modified by Spanish conventions for devotional directness.