This refined Crucifixion, once in the celebrated collects ion of Adolphe Stoclet (1871–1949) in Brussels, where it was published as a work by Bernardo Daddi (act. c. 1312–1348), is preserved today in very good state. It once formed the central section of a triptych, as indicated in the gable by the central position of Christ shown in the act of blessing and holding a book inscribed with the words from St John’s Gospel (John VIII: 12): ‘Ego sum lux mundi qui sequitur me’ (‘I am the light of the world, he who follows me…’). Indeed, the Evangelist is prominently positioned at the foot of the cross, with beside him Saint Augustine, an unusual figure to include within a Crucifixion scene, which may denote an Augustinian context for the work. Also unusual is the inclusion above the cross of the motif of the pelican piercing its breast to feed its young as a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice. The vertical edges show evidence of where the original wings, now lost, were secured and where perhaps pilasters or columns were once held in place.

An annotation on the reverse of a photo of the Stoclet Crucifixion at I Tatti, near Florence, indicates that Bernard Berenson attributed it to Cola di Petruccioli, a native of Orvieto.¹ However, by 1956 its Florentine origins were recognized by Jacques van Goidsenhoven, who ascribed it to Bernardo Daddi in his catalogue of the Stoclet collects ion. Since then the attribution has oscillated between the Master of Charles of Durazzo and Angelo Tartuferi’s identification of the work as an early example by the young Agnolo Gaddi, datable to around 1370.

The Master of Charles of Durazzo, who for now remains anonymous, was a prolific painter active in Florence towards the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century. He is named after an elaborately decorated cassone panel at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, painted in Florence in about 1382, the Conquest of Naples by Charles III of Durazzo, which depicts Charles' victory over Otto of Brunswick in 1381 (fig. 1). The artist’s place of origin has been much discussed in the literature; both Naples and Spain have been proposed, although he is now generally believed to have trained in Florence.² Other works by the same artist have been linked to the Metropolitan panel on stylistic grounds. The attribution of the Stoclet Crucifixion to the Master of Charles of Durazzo is recorded in three typewritten lists of works given to the Master, compiled by Everett Fahy on 13 July 1983, 30 November 1989 and 29 May 1993. In these lists, which are housed at the Fondazione Zeri in Bologna, Fahy recalls two previous letters written to him by Miklós Boskovits in the summer of 1981 and 1983 with a list of paintings that included the Stoclet Crucifixion, which he too ascribed to this anonymous master. Boscovits long maintained that the artist was Florentine, rather than Spanish or Neapolitan. These lists have subsequently been published by Boscovits.³

More recently, Emanuele Zappasodi has pointed out the Stoclet Crucifixion’s connections to other Crucifixions, drawing out characteristics such as the gracefully elongated body of Christ, comparable to the figure of Christ by Agnolo Gaddi (doc. 1369–96) in his Crucifixion at the Uffizi.⁴ Saint John, in profile, his hands raised to his face has parallels in the work of Giotto, in particular his Crucifixion at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasburg;⁵ and Mary, whose grief is expressed by her pose as she falls backwards and is supported by the three Holy Women, is a motif found in Trecento Sienese painting. Zappasodi has underlined the narrative verve and brilliant colouring evident in the Stoclet Crucifixion and also its importance as the master’s only known painting for private devotion, within a body of work centered on his activity as a painter of birth trays (deschi da parto) and cassoni.

Note on Provenance: the Stoclet collects ion

Adolphe Stoclet started collects ing Italian Old Masters while working as an engineer for the North Milan Tram Service from 1896 to 1902. He was encouraged by his wife Suzanne, who had spent much of her youth at the Paris house of her uncle, the painter Alfred Stevens, whose friends included Victor Hugo, Edmond de Goncourt and Debussy. Suzanne Stoclet introduced her husband to a society in which aesthetic values predominated, and in Milan the couple spent their days in museums, galleries and private collects ions, and their evenings at La Scala, hearing Toscanini and Caruso. Their six-year stay in Italy was followed by a shorter one in Vienna, where Adolphe Stoclet worked for a bank. The years 1902–03 in Vienna were febrile ones for the arts, and for the Stoclets, who came into close contact with the aesthetic movement, and in particular the architect Josef Hoffmann and his Wiener Werkstätte. In consequence Stoclet commissioned a house from Hoffmann when he returned to Brussels in 1904 (fig. 2). The result, the Palais Stoclet on the Avenue de Tervuren, opened in 1911, filled with Wiener Werkstätte furniture and décor, including picture frames. It rapidly became, and remains today, Brussels’ most famous building, and is a landmark of the aesthetic movement in Europe. The Stoclets, for whom collects ing was a vocation, filled it with art: from Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt, Mexico, Peru, China, Japan, Cambodia, India, Indonesia and Africa, as well as the Middle Ages in France and Italy, so that the fame of the Stoclet collects ion matched that of the Palais Stoclet that housed it.

¹ Fototeca Bernard Berenson, Villa I Tatti, inv. 132272.

² On a Neapolitan milieu see F. Bologna, I pittori alla corte angioina di Napoli (1266-1414) e un riesame dell’arte nell’età federiciana, Roma 1969, pp. 343–44; P. Leone De Castris, Arte di corte nella Napoli angioina, Firenze 1986, pp. 83, 91 n. 1; and P. Leone De Castris in La pittura a Nola e a Napoli nel primo Quattrocento. Una Madonna e santi ritrovata, Naples 2014, p. 13; for arguments against this see Boskovits 1991, pp. 37–38, and L. Sbaraglio, ‘L’origine dei cassoni istoriati nella pittura fiorentina’, in Virtù d’amore. Pittura nuziale nel Quattrocento fiorentino, C. Paolini, D. Parenti, L. Sebregondi (eds), exh. cat., Florence 2010, pp. 105–13, with further bibliography.

³ Boscovits 1991, p. 46 n. 14 and Fahy in De Marchi and E. Sambo (eds), 2021, pp. 250–51 n. 27.

⁴ Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence, inv. no. P656; tempera on panel, 59 x 77 cm.; Gli Uffizi, Catalogo generale, Florence 1979, p. 278, no. P656, reproduced.

⁵ Inv. no. 167; tempera on panel, 45.3 x 32.7 cm.; Fototeca Zeri, Bologna, no. 2277.