The Crucifixion on the inside of the lid of a burse, from the treasury of Basle Munster

Description

The painting, applied directly, without priming, to the silk and unvarnished, decorates the inside of the lid of a casket which formerly contained a corporal, the cloth on which the host, chalice and paten were placed during mass. The subject of the Crucifixion obviously has a bearing on the Eucharist with which the casket was associated. Against a blue starry sky alluding to the eclipse of the sun at the time of the Crucifixion - the Virgin, St John the Evangelist and Mary Magdalene mourn at the foot of the cross. The attribution of the work in 1959 not to a painter in Basle but to a Cologne follower of Stefan Lochner has recently been confirmed by technical investigation. It is related to the Darmstadt Crucifixion on cloth and to the small Crucifixion by the Master of 1456 in the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt. In addition, the small format and the reductive style have affinities to Cologne book illumination.