A haloed man with his back to us approaches a crowd gathered in a crate-like box unexpectedly set into a rocky landscape in this square painting. The central man, Jesus, is covered with a white cloth across one shoulder and both hips, and he carries a white banner marked with a red cross. He is barefoot as he steps on the opening to the box, which is hinged along the bottom edge. The door has crushed a wild-haired demon with red-colored skin against the pebble-strewn ground below. More than two dozen men and women of all ages are crowded into the box, their round faces tipped back and…
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Christ in Limbo

Benvenuto di Giovanni (Sienese, 1436 - before 1517)

probably 1491

Medium
tempera on panel
Classification
Painting
Dimensions
painted surface: 42.1 × 46.6 cm (16 9/16 × 18 3/8 in.) ; overall size: 43 × 48.7 cm (16 15/16 × 19 3/16 in.) ; framed (with four other paintings): 59.69 × 283.21 × 5.4 cm (23 1/2 × 111 1/2 × 2 1/8 in.)
Culture
Sienese
Museum
National Gallery of Art, CIS-R
Credit line
Samuel H. Kress Collection
Rights
Public domain (NGA Open Access, CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed

View at the National Gallery of Art