Crucifix

Perhaps even more than in the two large figures of the “Crucifixes” for S. Croce and for the Basilica del Santo itself, where their destination and official use inevitably imposed on him a certain respect for canonical forms, in this small sculpture – no more than a detail – Donatello realized in all its intensity the idea of Christ as martyred man, the “peasant” on the cross, in Brunelleschi's reproach. All formal idealization seems absent from this simple and direct plastic embodiment of human, popular “truth”.