Painted cross (Christus patiens)

In the cross in the Pinacoteca di Faenza, Christ is shown patiens, in other words with his eyes shut and his body creased with pain, rather than triumphans, i.e. triumphant over death with his eyes open and his body straight. The artist is likely to have drawn his inspiration for this model – so much closer to the new, more empathetic form of piety preached by the mendicant orders – from the crucifixes of Giunto Pisano, including from a cross in San Domenico in nearby Bologna.

The superb quality of the Faenza cross is revealed by the extremely fine chrysography of Christ’s loincloth, the elegant decoration adorning the Virgin’s mantle and the soft, subtle folds of St. John’s tunic. A crucial role, however, is also played by the tabelloni decorated with lozenges, with the insertion of mirrors and glass paste imitating precious fabrics. In the adornment of these parts of the cross, the Master very probably drew his inspiration from a crucifix in the church of San Ranierino in Pisa (now Pisa, Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, inv. no. 2325) “amplifying its precious chromatic effect” (Medica 2019, p.39) to achieve a result of such high quality that Caleca and Burresi were prompted to attribute the Faenza cross to the hand of Giunta himself (Burresi, Caleca 2005, pp. 74-75).

The Faenza cross has probably lost its version of the crowning disc with a half-figure depiction of Christ blessing that can still be seen on Giunta’s cross in Pisa and on another cross by the Master of the Franceiscan Crucifixes in the Muzzarelli Chapel in San Francesco in Bologna. The side panels, reflecting traditional iconography, have the grieving images of the Virgin and of St. John the Evangelist, which have very often been compared with those adorning a Crucifixion in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (inv. no. 28.886), leading scholars to attribute also the latter to the same Master ¹ .

Considering the painter’s close association with the Franciscan order and the inclusion of an image of St. Francis on the predella, the Faenza cross is highly likely to have come from the Compagnia di Santa Croce, a confraternity attached to the church of San Francesco in Faenza (Tambini 2006, p.74). Lollini (2023, p.53), however, points out that its small size suggests that it is more likely to have come from a smaller architectural complex, or that it should be seen as a cross designed for an altar, for hanging on a wall or for decorating a beam in a chapel.

Anna Tambini has suggested that c. 1530 the Franciscans may have given it to the Poor Clares in Santa Chiara together with another icon depicting the Conception. Following the dissolution of the religious institutions in 1866, the cross was moved to the city’s Ospedale Civile, whence it finally entered the Pinacoteca Comunale in 1878 (Tambini 2006, p. 74), although there is no mention of it in the first catalogue of the collection published in 1881.

If we accept the hypothesis that the cross came from the church of San Francesco in Faenza founded in 1271, then we can plausibly argue that it must have been painted at more or less the same date (Tambini 2006, p. 81). Thus it would be a product of the latter part of the Master’s career, which might well explain why it is of superior quality to its counterpart in the Pinacoteca di Bologna ² , confirming the opinion that the artist was “one of the most important painters working in central Italy in the 13th century” (Tartuferi 2015b, p. 190).