Crucifixion after Mantegna by Degas in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2023

Title: The Crucifixion, after Mantegna

Artist: Edgar Degas (French, Paris 1834–1917 Paris)

Artist: after Andrea Mantegna (Italian, Isola di Carturo 1430/31–1506 Mantua)

Date: ca. 1861

Geography: Country of Origin France

Culture: French

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 27 3/16 × 36 7/16 in. (69 × 92.5 cm)
Framed: 34 7/16 × 42 13/16 × 4 5/16 in. (87.5 × 108.8 × 11 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours (1934-6-1)

Accession Number: MD.087


Degas often asserted that the great artists of the past “must be copied over and over again.” Among those he returned to most was the Italian Renaissance painter Andrea Mantegna. This example can be securely dated to after Degas’s return to Paris from Italy in 1861, as Mantegna’s Crucifixion (1456–59) in the Louvre was one of the sources for a composition he was working on at the time. In a notebook, Degas recorded that he sought to combine aspects of two Italian Renaissance painters’ work: “the spirit and love of Mantegna with the verve and color of [Paolo] Veronese.”


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/845315