The Rasini Crucifixion Crosses the Atlantic
Photo source: BADA (The British Antique Dealers’ Association), 2026
A foundational northern-Italian panel of around 1350 has entered the Wadsworth Atheneum (USA) — one of the most significant Trecento acquisitions in a generation.
In October 2024 the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, acquired the small gold-ground Crucifixion known by the name of its last private owner, purchased from the New York dealer Nicholas Hall, who handled the sale with Trinity Fine Art of London. Purchase price was not publicly disclosed. The panel is modest in size — roughly 52 by 33 centimeters, tempera and gold on wood — but pitched at the register of a fresco. Christ hangs at the centre of a narrow, rocky enclosure; to one side the Virgin faints among the holy women and the Magdalen kneels to gather the falling blood, while to the other a knot of Roman soldiers presses forward. Its boldest stroke is a coarse tormentor shown from behind, lifting a vinegar-soaked sponge toward Christ's mouth — placing the viewer inside the crowd rather than before it.
The picture names an artist who otherwise has none: the "Master of the Rasini Crucifixion" a figure standing at the seam between the Lombard afterlife of Giotto and the naturalism developing around Verona and Padua. Several scholars, among them Miklós Boskovits and Sonia Chiodo, have argued for identifying him with the Veronese painter Altichiero da Zevio (c. 1330 – before 1393), though a date around 1350 would place the panel decades before his documented frescoes. The debate is old — the work first surfaced at the Mostra Giottesca in Florence in 1937 — and remains unsettled.
The name "Rasini" belongs not to a place but to the Milanese collector Giovanni Rasini (1892–1952), in whose family the panel remained by descent until 2024. Its passage from a private Milanese lineage to a public gallery is the kind of event that reshapes what can be seen — and taught — about gold-ground painting north of Tuscany.
Further reading:
Nicholas Hall, NYC - nicholashall.art
Trinity Fine Art, London (PDF book) - trinityfineart.com/app/uploads/2023/02/Rasini-Crucifixion_ENG.pdf
Wadsworth Atheneum, USA (PDF press release) - thewadsworth.org
The British Antique Dealers’ Association (BADA) - bada.org
