Chapel Croce di Giorno - Volterra - Tuscany

The chapel adjoins the church of San Francesco, to which it is connected by a side door.

The chapel was built by Mone de' Tedecinghi in 1315.
On the altar, where Rosso Fiorentino's Descent from the Cross stood until 1788, we now see an altarpiece with a Crucifixion by the painter Vincenzo Tamagni from San Gimignano.
The whole decoration, with its references to the childhood of Christ, the life of the Madonna and the cross, fits well within the religiosity of a brotherhood of flagellants such as the Compagnia della Croce di Giorno.

The Stories of the Cross consist of eight panels that follow each other in two registers.
The scenes depicted in the order of the reading are:

- Seth receives a sprig of the Tree of Life from an angel and plants it on Adam's grave
- After a bridge is made from the wood of the Tree, the Queen of Sheba recognizes it and worships it (not very legible)
- The wood is removed from the probation pool and the cross is made
- St Helena restores the cross and head by raising a man
- The transport of the cross to Jerusalem
- Stealing the Cross by Cosroé of Persia
- Cosroé worships himself as a god and dreams of Heraclius
Heraclius has Cosroe beheaded and returns the cross barefoot to Jerusalem
- Birth and Annunciation to the Shepherds
- Presentation of Jesus in the Temple
- Annunciation
- Flight to Egypt
- Passage of the Virgin

St. Francis and John the Baptist are also stigmatized on the pillars separating the bays, while the arch has ten busts of saints and prophets. In the vaults Evangelists (by Jacopo of Florence) and Saints Francis, Anthony of Padua and Bonaventura.

The cycle, along with that of Agnolo Gaddi, was the immediately preceding example for the iconography of the Stories of the True Cross by Piero della Francesca in the Basilica of San Francesco in Arezzo.

Willem Vandenameele