The Crucifix by Cimabue at Santa Croce is a large wooden crucifix painted c. 1265, one of two attributed to the Florentine painter and mosaicist Cimabue. Painted in distemper, it was commissioned by the Franciscan friars of Santa Croce and is built from a complex arrangement of timber boards. Displaying technical innovations and humanistic iconography, it is one of the first Italian artworks to break from the late medieval Byzantine style. The gilding and monumentality of the cross link it to the Byzantine tradition. Christ's static pose is reflective of this style, while the work overall incorporates newer, more naturalistic aspects. It presents a lifelike and physically imposing depiction of the passion at Calvary. Christ is shown nearly naked: his eyes are closed, his face lifeless and defeated. His body slumps in a position contorted by prolonged agony and pain. The painting is a graphic and unflinching portrayal of human suffering, and has influenced painters from Michelangelo to Francis Bacon. It has been in the Basilica di Santa Croce since the late 13th century, and at the museum at Santa Croce since restoration following flooding of the Arno in 1966. Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifix_(Cimabue,_Santa_Croce)> _______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries: 1471: Wars of the Roses: The Yorkists under Edward IV defeated the Lancastrians near the town of Barnet, killing Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Barnet> 1865: Actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth fatally shot U.S. President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Abraham_Lincoln> 1944: The freighter SS Fort Stikine, carrying a mixed cargo of cotton bales, gold and ammunition, exploded in the harbour in Bombay, India, sinking surrounding ships and killing about 800 people. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1944_Bombay_explosion> 1967: After leading a military coup three months earlier, Gnassingbé Eyadéma installed himself as President of Togo, a post which he held until 2005. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnassingb%C3%A9_Eyad%C3%A9ma> 1999: A storm dropped an estimated 500,000 tonnes of hailstones in Sydney and along the east coast of New South Wales, causing about A$2.3 billion in damages, the costliest natural disaster in Australian insurance history. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Sydney_hailstorm> _____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day: daily bread: 1. All those things, such as regular food and water, needed to sustain physical life. 2. (by extension, chiefly Christianity) All those things, such as regular prayer, worship and meditation, needed to sustain spiritual life. <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/daily_bread> ___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:   You waste time, my friend, in trying to convince me of all human life's failure and unimportance, for I am not in sympathy with this modern morbid pessimistic way of talking. It has a very ill sound, and nothing whatever is to be gained by it.   --James Branch Cabell <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Branch_Cabell>