Pere García de Benavarri, 'The Crucifixion', about 1450-60

Christ hangs on the Cross, emaciated, blood dripping from the wounds in his hands, feet and side. His head is slumped in death, his face pale. His followers sit on the ground around him, inconsolable. Mary Magdalene, dressed in her traditional red and with long fair hair, kneels in prayer next to the Cross. Christ’s mother, the Virgin Mary, collapses in grief, supported by two other female saints. These are presumably Mary Salome and Mary Cleophas who, according to the various biblical accounts, were present at the Crucifixion. On the other side, Saint John, Christ’s favourite disciple, rests his head sadly on his hand. We are not sure who the older woman on the right is meant to be – perhaps Saint Anne, the Virgin’s mother – but her scalloped polygonal halo is unusual.

This panel once formed the pinnacle of a large retablo or polyptych made for the small church of Saint Martin at Riglos, north-eastern Spain. Until recently the painting was attributed to the anonymous Master of Riglos, named after the altarpiece, but its style comes close to works by Pere García de Benavarri. García is thought to have trained with Blasco de Grañén (documented 1422–1459), the author of the main panel of the Riglos altarpiece showing Saint Martin giving his cloak to a beggar (today in the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona). Other small panels illustrating episodes from Saint Martin’s life are in various collections.

Spanish polyptychs at this date often took the form of a large central panel, showing the saint to whom the church was dedicated, surrounded by smaller panels and topped with an image of the Crucifixion. They often had very elaborate gilded frames.

The artist has had to adapt the composition to fit the horizontal format of the panel. Christ is surprisingly small in comparison to the other figures, and he is rather squashed under the gilded moulding, which comes down over the Cross, his halo and his hands. The scroll pinned to the top of the Cross – it reads ‘INRI’, which stands for ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’ – peeps out from the Gothic tracery. At the top of the painting, above the curving gold tracery, is a dark blue sky with golden stars; in his Gospel, Matthew writes that the midday sky went dark for three hours during the Crucifixion.

The whole scene is set in a barren mountainous landscape, presumably meant to represent Golgotha, the hill where Christ was crucified. Instead of sky there is a burnished gold background, decorated with a scrolling pattern: the gold background has been stamped with a metal tool to produce a three-dimensional effect. Such backgrounds were traditional in Spanish medieval painting – look at Bermejo’s Saint Michael triumphant over the Devil with the Donor Antoni Joan – and must have flickered and shone in the candlelight of a medieval church. The picture is painted on pine, the material traditionally used for Spanish panels as it was much more widely available than the oak used by north European painters.