Crucifixus is an 1884 painting by Russian artist Nikolai Ge. It is housed in the collection of the Museum of Don Cossacks, Novocherkassk, where it forms part of the permanent exhibition at the Ataman Palace. Researchers believe that the painting was commissioned by an unidentified Lutheran or Catholic church. The painting was acquired by the museum prior to the Second World War, and during the 1970s, it was included in the exhibition of paintings by painters of the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions.

Crucifixius drew the attention of art historians and culturologists in 2011, when the State Tretyakov Gallery prepared the exhibition, "What is Truth?'. Nikolai Ge. To the 180th anniversary of his birth." The canvas was subjected to infrared spectroscopy, the paint layer and ground were chemically analysed, and archival documents were lifted. A group of researchers presented a report on the painting at an international scientific conference in Moscow, held concurrently with the exhibition (the conference materials were published in 2014). In 2012, the scientific journal Russkoye Iskusstvo published a comprehensive article on the subject of Crucifixus. The article was authored by Tatiana Karpova, a Doctor of Art History, and Lidia Gladkova, Head of the Department of Scientific Expertise of the State Tretyakov Gallery.

In 2011-2012, the discovery of a new painting by Nikolai Ge was widely discussed in the Russian press. Articles devoted to the painting were published in leading central and regional print media. These include both business and socio-political publications, as well as tabloids: Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Moskovskij Komsomolets, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Argumenty i Fakty...

Description The painting is currently housed in the Museum of Don Cossacks in Novocherkassk. It is displayed in the permanent exposition on the first floor of the Ataman Palace. The painting is a vertically elongated rectangle measuring 195 × 140 cm in a simple wooden frame painted black. The technique used is oil painting on canvas.

The image is based on an episode from the New Testament concerning the execution of Jesus Christ. The action takes place on a low hill called Golgotha (translated from the Hebrew as 'The Throne Room'). Christ is depicted as already dead. His body remains crucified on a large wooden cross against the backdrop of a seashore, sea, and sky. A plaque above Christ's head abbreviates the Latin inscription "Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews". The Gospels of Luke and John mention the three languages in which the inscription was made, while the Gospels of Mark and Matthew only mention the inscription itself, without mentioning the three languages. The painting lacks the characters mentioned in the Gospels who were present at the execution: Mary, mother of Jesus, Mary of Clopas, Mary Magdalene, two robbers crucified on either side of Christ, the legionaries who "guarded" the cross and "scolded" Christ, the people, some "passers-by" who "cursed" Christ during the execution, and the Roman sotnik Longinus and John the Theologian, who are not mentioned in the Gospels but are considered by Christian tradition to be witnesses of Jesus' death. The time of the painting is the last rays of the setting sun.

The artist's signature and the date of creation of the canvas are inscribed in the lower right corner of one of the stones, reading "N. Ge. 1884".

Discovery

The Museum of Don Cossacks in Novocherkassk has a significant collection of Russian visual art, but the works of Nikolai Ge are not mentioned in the guidebooks published during the Soviet era, either as part of the museum's exhibition or in its storerooms. In October 2011, the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that experts from the State Tretyakov Gallery were working on the funds of the Museum of Don Cossacks in the city of Novocherkassk to determine the authenticity of the painting Crucifixus by Nikolai Ge. Moscow experts told the newspaper's correspondent that until 2011 Russian art historians had not recognised Crucifixus as the work of Nikolai Ge. However, the museum's records still list the painting as a creation by this artist. At the time of the article's publication, the attribution process was expected to take several weeks.

In 2012 and 2014, expert reports were published in the form of articles in scientific publications, which showed that during the preparation of the exhibition What is Truth?' Nikolai Ge. To the 180th anniversary of his birth (2011–2012), a painting almost unknown even to experts of the artist's work was discovered in the resources of the Museum of Don Cossacks. It was a large vertical Crucifixus. What prompted specialists to study the canvas was the discovery in the archive of Polina Chernyshyova, daughter of the Soviet artist Nikolai Chernyshyov, of a letter from the director of this museum, Leonid Sholokhov, to Chernyshyov, dated 17 April 1961. It was a response to the artist's enquiry about the painting Crucifixus by Nikolai Ge, which Chernyshyov had been informed could be in the museum. The letter from Sholokhov confirmed that the museum indeed possessed the painting in question, which was signed by Nikolai Ge. Its dimensions were given as 195 × 140 cm. The work was dated 1884 by the artist himself. Sholokhov reported that the painting had come to the museum in the 1920s from an unknown "lutheran church or catholic church." The letter from the museum director was accompanied by a black and white photograph of Crucifixus (some sources claim that there were two such photographs attached to the letter).

The staff of the Novocherkassk museum reported the presence of the Crucifixus in the museum's holdings in response to a request from the organisers of an exhibition of works by Nikolai Ge in Moscow to confirm the information obtained from Sholokhov's letter.

Two articles were published bearing the same title, "Nikolai Ge's 'Crucifixus' from Novocherkassk". One was published in the magazine Russkoye Iskusstvo in 2012, and the second was published under the auspices of the State Institute of Art History in 2014. The authors of the articles presented a report at an international conference in Moscow, which proposed that Chernyshev may have obtained information about the painting from Mikhail Teplov, an officer and amateur artist who was a student of Ge and the author of memoirs about him (the collective report of the researchers involved in the scientific expertise was read out on 30 January 2012 at the conference 'N. N. Ge. To the 180th anniversary of his birth' in the Tretyakov Gallery). From 1884 to 1888, during the creation of Crucifixus, Teplov lived on a khutor with Nikolai Ge. The Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan in Tashkent houses a portrait of Teplov, created by Nikolai Ge in 1885. Chernyshev encountered Teplov in Tashkent during the evacuation in 1941.

Debate on authorship The hypothesis that Nikolai Ge was the author of the painting from Novocherkassk had yet to be proven. Following the conclusion of the exhibition, entitled What is Truth? Nikolai Ge. On the 180th anniversary of his birth, and the international scientific conference that accompanied it, the correspondence between the museum, as well as another photograph of the painting were discovered in the archive of Natalia Zograf, a Soviet art historian who curated the exhibition of Nikolai Ge in 1970-1971. On 16 December 1965, O.E. Voronina, deputy director of the museum for the scientific part, wrote to Zograf (with the punctuation of the original preserved), as follows:

The letter was accompanied by a copy of a reply from the Research Museum of the Academy of Arts of the USSR, dated 7 May 1964, signed by the head of the painting department, L. F. Galich. In her written response, the art historian stated that, based on the provided photograph, the painting in question does not appear to be the work of Ge. She presented two arguments to support this assertion: firstly, that Ge did not address the theme of the crucifixion in the 1880s and created a markedly different representation of Christ in the 1890s. Secondly, the canvas displays the characteristics of an Altarpiece. It can be reasonably assumed that Nicholas Ge created this work for an Orthodox church, but in this case the image of Christ would have to be more "canonical". Thirdly, it is challenging to ascertain the artist's identity solely from the photograph, as the canvas's colour scheme is not discernible. Galich formulated her conclusion as follows: "On the whole, the thing raises great doubt that it was painted by Ge".

Natalia Zograf was never able to view the painting in the Museum of Don Cossacks in person. While compiling a catalogue of the artist's paintings, she did not include the Crucifixus from Novocherkassk not only among the originals, but even among the works that are open to question by art historians.

In the autumn of 2011, Tatiana Karpova, the curator of the exhibition '''What is Truth?'. Nikolai Ge. To the 180th anniversary of his birth, together with members of the Expertise Department of the State Tretyakov Gallery (Lidia Gladkova, Tatiana Rustamova and Vladimir Voronov), undertook an analysis of the painting during a visit to Novocherkassk. The collected material was subjected to a comparative analysis with the paintings identified as etalon works in the oeuvre of Nikolai Ge. The researchers concluded that the artist was indeed the author of the paintings in question.

In their two publications and in a speech delivered at a scientific forum in Moscow, the experts presented a detailed account of their arguments. An analysis of the infrared radiation spectrum revealed a multitude of alterations on the painting, predominantly pertaining to the positioning of the figure of Jesus Christ. In particular, the figure was shifted to the right. The changes also affected the shape of the hands and the bending of the arms at the elbows. The artist peeled off the original image of Christ's face rather than painting a new one over it, as he had done with all the other details. The width of the crossbar was reduced. Changes were made to the column, the outline of the inscription 'INRI' on the tablet above Christ's head and the cloth on his thighs.

The presence of authorial changes on the canvas is a defining characteristic of Nikolai Ge's creative handwriting, according to researchers. Additionally, researchers have identified another indicator of Nikolai Ge's authorship on the painting, namely the combination of fragments "loaded with colour paste" and the ground that is barely covered with paint.

A resemblance to Ge's painting In the Garden of Gethsemane was discerned in the portrayal of facial features, including the nose, eye sockets, brow arches, distribution of light and shadow, the form and direction of movement of strokes, the manner of depicting strands of hair in texture and colour, and the depiction of stones. There are similarities with the painting What is Truth? Christ and Pilate in the peculiarities of the construction of the wrists and hands of the figures, as well as in the representation of the background (the colouring of the landscape at the feet of Christ in the Crucifixus and the section of the wall between the figures of Pontius Pilate and Jesus Christ coincide). The forged nails with round caps are similar to those in the Crucifixion of 1892.