When one thinks about great Medieval artists, Giotto and Giovanni Pisano’s names immediately come to mind. I visited their masterpieces, the frescoes in the Arena Chapel in Padua and the sculpted pulpits of Pisa and Pistoia, when I was a student. These first encounters are deeply ingrained in my memory. 

 

I never would have thought that I would be fortunate enough to handle a work by one of these masters. Giovanni Pisano marks an extraordinary moment in the history of sculpture and the story behind the sale of this intensely emotional Corpus vouches for the outstanding importance and rarity of his art. 

 

The Musée de Cluny in Paris showed interest in acquiring this work early in 2020. As the National Museum of the Middle Ages, it hardly ever acquires works that do not have a strong connection to French art history. The exceptionality of the Crucifix and Pisano’s debt to French Gothic masters however spurred the team at the museum, which embarked on an ambitious fundraising campaign to coincide with their greatly anticipated and successful reopening of the museum in 2022.

 

The Crucifix officially joined the collections of the Museum in January 2023. It is the only work by the Tuscan master in a French public collection. 

c. 1250 - after 1314

Ivory with traces of gilding

21.5 cm high 

circa 1270

• Private Collection, Switzerland