The Descent from the Cross

Bernardino Jacobi Butinone · c. 1485

Medium

Tempera on panel

Original size

26 × 20.4 cm (10 3/16 × 8 1/16 in.); Framed: 30.8 × 25.8 × 7.7 cm (12 1/8 × 10 1/8 × 3 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Italian Renaissance

Bernardino Butinone's *The Descent from the Cross* is a work of concentrated grief — figures pressed close together in a shallow, gold-tinged space that gives the scene an almost icon-like intensity. Butinone was a Milanese painter working in the late fifteenth century, closely associated with Bernardo Zenale, with whom he collaborated on major altarpiece commissions. His style blends the hard, linear precision of northern Italian tempera painting with an emotional directness that sets him apart from the more courtly painters of the Sforza circle. The figures in this panel have a sculptural weight unusual for tempera work of the period — drapery folds that look carved rather than painted, faces that register pain without melodrama. The painting has been held by the Art Institute of Chicago as part of its collection of early Italian panel paintings, where it stands as a relatively rare example of Butinone's devotional work outside major altarpiece cycles. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates the original's compressed drama and jewel-toned palette onto canvas with care, preserving the stillness and solemnity that make this small panel such an affecting piece of late-Quattrocento painting.