This impressive Crucifix, placed on the back wall of the gallery, originally came from an altar in the north-east wall of the Baptistery, where it formed a pendant with another work on the opposite wall: Donatello’s Penitent Magdalene, now placed opposite it in the same room. The two works are united by their raw naturalism, as well as by their material and technique.
It is a masterpiece in polychrome wood, attributed to Giovanni di Balduccio and dated around 1330. The Crucifix, with movable upper limbs, was also used for devotional practices: it was detached from the cross and laid down with its arms along its sides, to represent Christ as deposed. In light of this dual representational function, the sculpture was conceived to evoke devotional pietism, that is, to stir the emotions of the faithful observer.
This explains why the figure is rendered with striking naturalistic objectivity and infused with extreme suffering. The dimensions are life-size, the anatomy is tense and wiry, the skin color is brownish, tending towards a bloodless yellow, the head is reclined and marked by the impressive details of the half-open mouth in the last breath and the eyes, glassy and rolled back in pain. The blood, gushing from the hands, feet, side, and forehead, runs naturally and fluidly through the depressions and swellings of the body.
The element of blood, combined with the pallor of the flesh, recalls the wine and bread of the Eucharist, the central sacrament of the Catholic faith and liturgy. Just as the Penitent Magdalene was ideally oriented toward the high altar, where the Eucharistic mystery was celebrated, so too this Crucifix was intended to evoke the same sacramental presence.
From the eighteenth century onward, the theological connection with the sacrament of Baptism — for which the Baptistery was originally intended — was made explicit by the plaque placed above the altar (now preserved in the entrance courtyard of the Museum), bearing the words In morte ipsius baptizati sumus, drawn from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans (6:3–4): “Or are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”