Single Miniature Excised from a Missal: The Crucifixion (c. 1385–1390): Art, History and Details

Single Miniature Excised from a Missal: The Crucifixion (c. 1385–1390) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This miniature of the Crucifixion once formed the introductory illustration to the Canon of the Mass in a liturgical missal. The miniature’s style and compositional details compare with the work of various immigrant Netherlandish painters active in France during this same period. The Netherlands was rich in artistic talent, and the willingness with which immigrant artists were accepted in France is demonstrated by an entire generation of Franco-Flemish artists. Elements in the miniature-such as the grouping of the holy women on Christ’s right who support the grieving Virgin, and the treatment of Christ on the cross-are similar to Jean de Beaumetz, court painter to Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy (1364-1404).

Object facts

• Title: Single Miniature Excised from a Missal: The Crucifixion
• Date: c. 1385–1390
• Culture: Flanders, Bruges
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera, and gold on parchment
• Dimensions: Sheet: 27.3 x 20.3 cm (10 3/4 x 8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1924.1014

Collection credit

Gift from J. H. Wade

Further reading listed by the museum

• W. M. M. “Illuminated Miniatures in the Cleveland Museum of Art.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 12, no. 4 (April 1925): 61–71.
• “Gothic Art 1360-1440.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 50, no. 7 (September 1963): 174–215.
• Fajt, Jiří. Nürnberg als Kunstzentrum des Heiligen Römischen Reichs: höfische und städtische Malerei in der Zeit Kaiser Karls IV. 1346-1378. Berlin : Deutscher Kunstverlag ; Prag : Nationalgalerie Prag 2019.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.