View this object's location on our interactive map Physical Descriptions Medium Tempera on panel Dimensions image: 35.9 x 43 cm (14 1/8 x 16 15/16 in.) Level 2, Room 2500, European Art, 13th–16th century, Art and Image in Europe Title The Descent into Limbo Other TitlesĪlternate Title: Christ in Limbo Classification Paintings Work TypeĬreation Place: Europe, Italy, Tuscany, Siena Culture Italian Persistent Link Location Previously attributed to Sassetta, Italian (c. Identification and Creation Object Number 1922.172 People Master of the Osservanza, Italian (active c. Here they may be the older men being drawn to the luminous glow of the resurrected Christ. In La resurrezione (The Resurrection), a fourteenth-century poem by Niccolò Cicerchia, Christ storms through hell, helping the three patriarchs - Adam, Abel, and Noah - to escape. Predellas devoted to the Passion were not uncommon, but the depiction of the Descent into Limbo is unusual and may relate to a Sienese literary source. They form one of the artist’s most important narrative cycles and are among the most remarkable Sienese paintings of the fifteenth century.

Although the altarpiece from which it comes was dismantled and is now difficult to reconstruct accurately, all five scenes from its predella survive. It belongs to the predella, or lower register, of a similar altarpiece that presents episodes from the Passion of Christ.

This panel is by the Master of the Osservanza, named after a large altarpiece in the church of the Osservanza outside of Siena.

Descent into limbo