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The theme of Christ's crucifixion before Mary and the favoured apostle, John, is made more dramatic by the figures of the despairing angels who are collecting the streams of blood from the hands and ribs of the Saviour. The black background amplifies the tragic effect, but this is the result of repainting and we do not know if it was added to replace an original background in gold leaf, as commonly used in 14th-century paintings, or in azurite.
The painting is attributed to Niccolò di Pietro Gerini, a Florentine artist working in the late 14th century, who made the traditional style of Giotto his strong point, recreating iconographic and style models devised by Giotto and his closest collaborators at the start of the century.
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