Hand-painted in oil
About this Artwork
A Calvary with a fifteenth-century saint in it
The title lists the figures: the Virgin, Mary Magdalene and St. John, all of whom the gospels place at the cross, and St. Francis of Paola, who was born in 1416 and could not have been there. That is not an error. Adding a later saint to a Calvary was standard practice — it marks the picture as made for a particular order, church or devotion, and it converts a historical scene into one the commissioning community can stand inside.
Where it falls
The Crucifixion itself, the fixed centre of the Passion. The group at the foot of the cross is the part of the episode the gospels describe most fully, and the part that admits additions of this kind, since it is a scene of witnesses rather than of action.
The record
The catalogue gives Nicolas Tournier, 1628, and the Louvre in Paris. At 422 by 292 centimetres it is the largest entry in this group by recorded size — over four metres high, unambiguously an altarpiece. The style is entered as tenebrism and the artist as French. The measured palette reads as red. Which church the canvas was painted for is not in the record, and this page does not supply one.
Sources
1 references- Tournier, Nicolas — Getty ULAN
French painter, baptized 1590, died before 1639
