Portable, Double Sided Cross (verso)

This type of cross, with sacred images on both sides, is described as “astile” because it was displayed to the faithful during processions, when it would be mounted on a long pole (asta).
On one side, three saints are represented martyred by beheading: they kneel with their hands clasped in prayer. At the top is Saint Paul, on the left Saint James the Greater and on the right Saint John the Baptist. These macabre images show that the cross was originally intended to comfort prisoners under sentence of death. At the bottom appear two Dominican saints: Peter Martyr and Thomas Aquinas.
On the other side, the traditional images of the Virgin Mary, of Saint John the Evangelist and the Redeemer are accompanied below by the unusual figure of a fleshless corpse, representing the condemned man dressed in the black tunic of the execution.
The work is a masterpiece of the maturity of Bernardo Daddi, a painter of the school of Giotto working in Florence in the fourteenth century.