Although naturalism was evolving in his time, Carlo Crivelli remained a painter in the courtly gothic sensibility of years earlier. He favored verdant landscape backgrounds, and his paintings have a linear quality. Crivelli’s works are not “soft,” but clear and definite in contour, with astounding attention to detail. Often filled with images of suffering, Crivelli's work was exclusively religious. These ultra-realistic, sometimes disturbing qualities have often led critics to label Crivelli's paintings “grotesque.”Here, however, Crivelli’s rich attention to detail is enriching. The spear, the gall-soaked sponge, column and scourges, nails, and the crown of thorns are all included. The dominant symbol, the cross, is here depicted as scholars expect the true cross to have looked: almost a T-shape, with Christ’s sentence on a dowel above.
This work also commemorates the stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi. St. Francis stands as a type for all men who may share Christ’s cross, receiving Christ’s blood in a chalice.
