The Cerruti work is a particularly fine example of the Bolognese painter’s late period. It displays his ability to involve the viewer, as well as the piety and fluid narrative skill of his painting.

The work appeared at a Tajan auction in Paris in 1990 with the correct attribution to the Bolognese painter Simone di Filippo, a prolific and successful master active in the second half of the 14th century, better known as Simone dei Crocifissi. The use of this name as early as the 17th century is recorded in Felsina pittrice (1687), a collection of biographies of Bolognese masters by Cesare Carlo Malvasia (1616-93), who does not overlook the painter’s ability in the depiction of “large images of the Redeemer nailed to the cross for the love of us”.

The triptych was publicised by Filippo Todini when it was in the Galerie Sarti,¹ from whence it subsequently found its way into the Cerruti Collection. It is in an excellent state of preservation. Ancient marks of scorching by candle on the lower edge of the original frame, slightly left of centre, attest to the devotional use of the triptych. The central panel shows the crucified Christ with the Virgin, St John the Evangelist and the kneeling Mary Magdalene clinging to the cross in despair. Pope Urban V and St James frame the scene on either side. The lateral panels are both divided into three registers by two tooled bands. From the top, the one on the left presents the Angel of the Annunciation, Nativity of Christ and Adoration of the Magi, and the one on the right the Virgin Annunciate, Scourging of Christ and Christ before Pontius Pilate.

In the vast number of devotional works produced by Simone, this is the only example of a triptych with narrative side panels with the possible exception of two fragments that may be from a work of similar structure (the Taking of Christ and Ascent to Calvary, London, private collection).² The Cerruti work is a particularly fine example of the Bolognese painter’s late period.³ It displays his ability to involve the viewer, as well as the piety and fluid narrative skill of his painting, which features moderate touches of decorative finesse in the programmatic variety of the haloes stamped with an alternation of simple punch marks, palmettes and flowers with four or five petals. The dream-like style of Vitale, a crucial influence in his early years, has now given way to accentuated sculptural rigidity and bold chiaroscuro. Like Cristoforo di Jacopo, Andrea de’ Bruni and other followers of Vitale, he brings the master’s freer Gothic approach under control with a more disciplined handling of space. The crowded scenes teem with figures whose emphatic and eloquent gestures seem to recall the narrative freshness of the Master of the Bolognese Polyptychs, albeit translated with an appealing verve strengthened through contact with Giovanni di Fra Silvestro, aka the Master of the Brussels Initials,⁴ in the straightforward and occasionally crude expressive style typical of Simone and initiated by him as early as the Pietà painted for Giovanni da Elthinl in 1368 (Bologna, Museo Davia Bargellini).⁵

The daringly foreshortened depiction of Mary Magdalene throwing her head back at the foot of the cross shows the influence of the stark neo-Giottesque style of Jacopo Avanzi,⁶ whose aristocratic intellectualism and lofty formal mastery are, however, rejected as extraneous to the moderate tone of his simultaneously expressive and affable painting, a genuine manifestation of the taste of the dominant classes during the period of the Governo del Popolo e delle Arti in Bologna.⁷ Looking towards the viewer, their faces flushed with weeping, the Virgin and St John wring their hands in grief, hers raised to her cheek and his to his breast. Simone made repeated use of this model, first on a monumental scale in the cornice of the polyptych produced for the church of Santi Leonardo e Orsola and then in many other small-sized works, including the panel of the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, the triptych of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the former Ergas Crucifixion in Florence and the one in the Museo Davia Bargellini in Bologna.⁸ The presence of Urban V (1310-70, pope from 1362 to 1370), devoid of a halo and clad in a tiara and a subtly gilded red vestment trimmed with purple, holding a book open on the Leonine verse O sucesor Christi per graciam quam meruisti (Oh successor of Christ, for the grace you have deserved), attests to the immediate popularity of the cult of this pope, fostered immediately after his death in 1370 by the papal legate Anglico de Grimoard, his brother, and then undergoing considerable growth in Bologna during the government of Giovanni da Legnano.⁹

[Emanuele Zappasodi]

¹ F. Todini, in Paris 1998, pp. 84-85.

² G. Del Monaco, in Bologna 2013, p. 14.

³ F. Todini, in Paris 1998; D. Benati, in Madrid- Orviedo 1998; Del Monaco 2018.

⁴ Medica 2010-11; G. Del Monaco, in Bologna 2013, p. 62; Del Monaco 2018.

⁵ Benati 1999, pp. 683-684.

⁶ Del Monaco 2018.

⁷ D. Benati, “Protagonisti del secondo Trecento bolognese”, in Bologna 2012, pp. 5-7; Del Monaco 2018, pp. 62-63.

⁸ See Del Monaco 2018, p. 124, cat. 20, pp. 149-153, cat. 33, p. 179, cat. 49, pp. 200-201, cat. 69, p. 202, cat. 70.

⁹ Pini 2005; R. Gibbs, “Bologna and the Popes: Simone dei Crocefissi’s Portraits of Urbano V”, in Bourdua, Gibbs 2012, pp. 187-189.