# The Crucifixion

- By: Carlo Crivelli (Italian, about 1430–about 1495)
- Date: c. 1487
- Medium: Tempera on panel
- Classification: Painting
- Dimensions: 75 × 55.2 cm (29 9/16 × 21 3/4 in.); Framed: 91.4 × 72.1 × 10.2 cm (36 × 28 3/8 × 4 in.)
- Culture: Italy
- Credit line: Wirt D. Walker Fund
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/111622)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/35afa43f-bdb5-06b8-81c5-416927ffe8ee/full/!1629,1080/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Teens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

Carlo Crivelli’s vivid style married the beautiful with the grotesque. Here, the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Evangelist gaze in anguish at Jesus on the cross. Crivelli enhanced the scene’s morbidness by depicting Jesus emaciated and puffy-eyed, his mouth agape, with blood dripping from his wounds. As subtle hints toward his eventual victory over death, wind animates his loincloth and inflates the sail of a boat in the distance, while verdant plants shoot up from cracks in the rocky, arid terrain.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0