Attributed to Konrad Witz (German, 1400/10–1444/46), The Crucifixion, circa 1440–50, oil on panel transferred to canvas, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, Kat. 1656.

Audio Description

This painting of The Crucifixion, was made around 1440 to 1450 and is attributed to the German artist Konrad Witz, who lived 1400/10 to 1444/46. It is an oil painting on panel that has been transferred to canvas. It is in the collection of the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin and its catalogue number is 1656.

At the center of this 13 by 10 inch painting is the crucified Jesus. Nailed to a t-shaped cross, the gaunt, pale figure’s head hangs down, his eyes closed. Five figures surround the cross, which is set within a verdant landscape of gently rolling hills. In the background, a walled city at the right is sited on a lake bordered by mountains. Four figures stand in mourning around the cross: to the left Jesus’s mother Mary, in blue, stands at the front and behind her are two women in white veils, one wearing a yellow robe and the other a red robe. The Apostle John stands on the right side of the cross wearing a long red robe and brown hair that falls to his shoulders. He leans forward and holds his hands tightly clasped in grief under his chin as he stares up at Jesus. In the foreground, at lower left, a man with tonsored hair kneels with his hands together in prayer as he looks up toward Christ; his long red robe gathers in heavy folds on the ground.

Label Copy

This painting of The Crucifixion, was made around 1440 to 1450 and is attributed to the German artist Konrad Witz, who lived 1400/10 to 1444/46. It is an oil painting on panel that has been transferred to canvas. It is in the collection of the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin and its catalogue number is 1656.

Konrad Witz was born in Germany but worked primarily in Basel, Switzerland. In this small panel, the artist depicts the Crucifixion in a lush landscape with a view to a city on the right and a lake bordered by mountains in the distance. In the foreground, the painting’s donor kneels in prayer.

This panel was one of two paintings attributed to Witz transferred to the United States as part of the “202.” Both panels were exhibited at the National Gallery of Art and four subsequent venues. Writing about the exhibition in the New York Times, May 16, 1948, journalist Aline B. Louchheim noted how this was an opportunity for visitors to see “little known” early German masters, and singled out The Crucifixion, “where the grief-stricken figures, ingeniously arranged around the Cross, assert themselves as sculptural solids against the spacious landscape.”

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