Vatican Museums

“The Crucifixion is distinguished by the fascinating fluidity of the bodies of the women weeping at the foot of the cross. These appear to be painful extensions of the very body of Christ, all saturated with an unearthly light that constitutes the dominant character of the painting”.
Thus Tommaso Filippo Marinetti described the work, painted in 1927 by the Perugian Gerardo Dottori, an exponent of the second phase of Futurism.
The artist had started to experiment with ideas of an art inspired by the sacred from the first years of the 1900s. when he received his first commissions for mural decorations in religious buildings. This Crucifixion is one of the most noteworthy religious works by this artist, who in 1932 joined Marinetti in signing the Manifesto of Futurist Religious Art. The work was originally considered to represent the sacred in an indecent fashion. There exists another version, of the same size, displayed at the Biennial of Religious Art in the Holy Year 1950.