Luca di Tommè’s <i>Crucifixion</i> in Montepulciano: Its Construction and Function

Abstract When Luca di Tommè’s Crucifixion in the Museo Civico, Montepulciano, first appeared in 1926, it became the only known Sienese painting on cloth from the Trecento, and thus a rare example of a type of Early Italian painting about which little is known. Because it was painted on cloth, it has been called a processional banner, yet until now no attempt has been made to determine whether in its choice of materials, or in its construction, it conforms with how banners were traditionally made, as described by Cennino Cennini in his Il Libro dell’Arte . That all changed during the Covid pandemic of 2021 and 2022, when the author examined letters, reports and photographs of the painting provided to him by Lucia Monaci, a Florence-based researcher, to reconstruct how the Crucifixion was made and had been altered since 1926. Although the painting is now mounted to a wood panel, based on the information provided by Monaci, and the author’s own research on the painting in 1975, he concludes that the painting was most probably conceived as a single devotional painting and not as a processional banner.