Description
The Crucifix of San Felice in Piazza is a monumental painted cross preserved in the Florentine church of the same name. Its date and attribution have long been debated, but an important strand of scholarship connects it with Giotto's return to Florence after Padua, around 1306–1308. Christ is shown dead on the cross, with his head inclined, body sagging under its own weight and torso modeled through soft transitions of light and shadow. The anatomy moves beyond the linear rigidity of earlier traditions toward a more convincing corporeality.
The Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist appear at the ends of the crossbar as mourners. Their gestures and expressions relate the work to the emotional language Giotto developed in the Scrovegni Chapel and other paintings of the early fourteenth century.
