Crucifix

The fortuitous discovery of this Crucifix attests the great and prolific activity of the Altamuran sculptor Filippo Angelo Altieri. The work is in close correlation with that of the same subject and larger in size, which is part of the series of Passion sculptures created by the author, preserved in the church of San Sepolcro in Altamura and probably came from the thirteen seventeenth-century chapels of Via Crucis arranged in the same city. In both crucifixes, the author picks up the moment of atonement, also focusing on the tragic description of the event: the pathetic expression of the face and the evident bloody wounds. In fact, the physiognomic yield of the face is sought after, framed by wavy and well-defined locks; the expression is completely abandoned, the eyes half-open, the half-open mouth allows a glimpse of the teeth, while a large stream of blood comes out from the wound between the ribs. The intense pathos that pervades the Crucifix of Altamura denotes affinity with the wooden sculptures of the same subject created by sculptors belonging to the Franciscan order, as friar Angelo da Pietrafitta, active in southern Italy in the second half of the eighteenth century, whose works are characterized from evident pietistic tones and a strong attention in the naturalistic rendering of the details. The attribution of the work to Filippo Angelo Altieri is confirmed in comparison with the master's certain works, such as the dead Christ preserved in the Altamuran church of San Francesco da Paola with which he shares strong stylistic analogies and the same modus operandi recognizable in the physiognomic tract , in the dramatically naturalistic rendering of the body, in the contraction of the abdominal muscles, in the deep folds of the loincloth knotted laterally to the eyelet.