Crucifix (Giotto)

Giotto's painted cross hangs the dead Christ with a startling new naturalism: the body slumps straight down under its own weight, the belly sagging, the head fallen onto the chest, with the Virgin and Saint John mourning in the terminals at the ends of the arms. Compared with Cimabue's crucifix for Santa Croce, where Christ swings in an elegant Byzantine curve, Giotto's is a real, heavy corpse modeled in pale flesh. Painted for the Dominican friars of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, it transformed how Italian artists imagined the crucified Christ.