The crucifix The wooden crucifix above the main altar was first mentioned in 1530 as the
imago Crucifixi. The origin and authorship of the sculpture is uncertain. Barbara Fabjan assumed that it was produced in the orbit of
Matteo Civitali, a Tuscan artist active in the second half of the 15th century. "The face appears to be a sort of coarse and rustic but intensely dramatic replica of the
Eucharistic Christ at
Lammari, a late work by Civitali executed between 1496 and 1501", she concluded. Fabjan supposed that the statue was commissioned by Teodorina Cybo in a period when Tuscan artistic influences were strong in
Rome. The statue became an object of great devotion. Tradition says that
St Philip Neri spent a lot of time in front of it in prayer, while Pope
Gregory XIII granted privileges to the altar in 1576. The justification for the 1636 restoration of the chapel was "the reverence felt by the whole Roman people" towards the statue, and the entire painted decoration aimed to underscore its importance. The current wooden Corinthian aedicule which frames the statue comes only from the 19th century but a similar structure was most probably created after 1636 because the decoration around the windows takes this into account. The sculpture was made of poplar wood covered in canvas, stuccoed and painted. The crucifix was restored in 1922 when the arms and the feet were replaced, the cross is modern.
Frescos The side walls are articulated by painted Corinthian pilasters and the splays of the windows are decorated with monochrome trophies including the
instruments of the Passion. The archivolt of the entrance arch is decorated with coffers and rosettes. Two portraits in oval medallions on the sides of the altar represent Innocenzo Cybo and his wife (the male head is heavily damaged). The painted architecture, which is among the finest from the period in Rome, was executed by
Pietro Paolo Drei. Two large
frescos by a Flemish artist, Pieter van Lint depict scenes from the legend of the
True Cross: on the left side the
Invention of the True Cross, on the right the
Exaltation of the Cross. The first painting shows the moment when the True Cross was identified: three crosses were found on the site of the
Calvary by
Saint Helena and the body of a dead man was brought to the place. The True Cross restored the dead to life. The scene is set in a bucolic landscape with the city of Jerusalem on the left and a small shrine with the statue of
Apollo on the right. The second painting shows Emperor
Heraclius when he brought back the cross to
Jerusalem in 629. He tried to enter the city carrying the cross but he was stopped until he dismounted his palfrey, and took off his imperial robes and boots. The gate of
Jerusalem closely resembles the original
Porta del Popolo outside of the basilica giving the impression that the procession is arriving on
Via Flaminia. The richly decorated stucco frames of the paintings are crowned with the Soderini coat-of-arms. The
Invention of the True Cross was copied by another Flemish artist, the engraver
Pieter de Bailliu. He was also working in Rome around 1636 but his print was only published through the support of Judocus Gillis, the abbot of the Cistercian
abbey of St. Bernard near
Antwerp in the 1650s. A preparatory study for the same fresco was sold in Cologne in 1892. The frescos on the vault depict the
Angels with the Symbols of the Passion. In the five main field brightly winged angels hold
objects associated with the Passion of Christ: the purple robe of mockery and the crown of thorns; the cross; the Veronica; the Holy Tunic; the Holy Lance and the Holy Sponge on a reed. In the two narrow fields on the sides there are chubby putti reading a book and playing on musical instruments. The fresco in the central oculus shows
God the Father surrounded by cherubs. A small coat-of-arms of the Cybo family survived on the vault as part of the decoration. A preparatory study of an angel by Pieter van Lint is conserved in
Rotterdam. There are four
Prophets in the lunettes while the central lunette is filled with clouds and two putti. The lunette frescos are connected to the central theme of the painted decoration because the four Old Testament figures prefigured or prophesied the mission and death of Jesus. The parallels could be easily grasped by an erudite spectator in the Baroque era but they were also explained by way of the accompanying inscriptions. In the first lunette
Daniel is depicted who visioned that "the Anointed One will be put to death" (Daniel 9:26) which was traditionally interpreted as a reference to the death of Christ. His angel is holding up a tablet with Greek, Latin and Hebrew letters, a probable reference to the holy relic of the
Titulus Crucis which was also brought to Rome by Saint Helena. In the second lunette King David is shown with his harp, sceptre and a putto holding a scroll with an inscription: "[R]egnavit a ligno De[us]" which means: "God has reigned from the wood", an allusion to the cross. The expression is derived from a now obsolete version of the
Psalm 96 in the
Psalterium Romanum and appeared in this form in the hymn
Vexilla Regis by
Venantius Fortunatus. The words were widely understood as a prophecy that predicted the crucifixion of Christ and his reign over the world. The third prophet is not
Hosea, as sometimes mistakenly identified, but
Isaiah. The words on his scroll clearly reveal his true identity: "Non est sp[eci]es ei ne[que decor]" which means "he had no form nor comeliness". This is a line from
Isaiah 53, the fourth
Servant song which has been interpreted as a prophecy about the suffering of Jesus since apostolic times. At last Prophet Jonah is shown leaning against the whale and writing the following words on a tablet: "Tollite me, et [mittite in mare]" which means "Pick me up and [throw me into the sea]" (Jonah 1:12). The gesture that he was ready to give up his life to save his companions from certain death during the raging storm was seen as a prefiguration of the sacrifice of Christ.
Augustine of Hippo wrote in a letter: "And as Jonah suffered this for the sake of those who were endangered by the storm, so Christ suffered for the sake of those who are tossed on the waves of this world."
Attribution An inscription on the vault clearly states: "PETRUS/VAN LINT/(AN)T(VE)RP(ENSIS)/COLOR(IBU)S/P()R()T()S FEC(IT)/PETR(US) PAUL(US) DREUS/ROM(ANUS) ORNA/MENTA ARCH/ITE(C)T(URAE) DELIN(EAVIT)/AN(NO) SALUT(I)S/[...]", referring to Pieter van Lint (and also Pietro Paolo Drei). The year of the execution is missing due to a lacuna but a very fine preparatory study for the figure of Jonah, preserved in the
Fondation Custodia, bears the date of 1637. In spite of the unambiguous painted statement, which was certainly meant as an advertisement for the two masters, the true authorship of the work became obfuscated. Some later Italian descriptions - in 1713, 1725 and 1741 - only speak of a
fiammingo artist suggesting that Van Lint's name was not generally known at the time. In 1674 the paintings were erroneously attributed to
Luigi Gentile by
Filippo Titi and this mistake was often repeated in later literature. Notwithstanding this confusion the frescos of the chapel were created by Pieter van Lint, a little-known Flemish artist who "proved to be a highly educated painter from a visual standpoint, deeply absorbing models of Italian painting, especially that of the Emilian school". The soft chromatic passages and the peaceful landscapes show the influence of
Domenichino and
Guido Reni.
Burial vault The tomb slab is set in the middle of the tiled floor. The Latin inscription states that Count Soderini, a Roman patrician, restored the derelict chapel of the crucifix in 1825. The circular slab with the Soderini coats-of-arms is surrounded by six winged skulls in typical Baroque fashion. Possibly parts of the slab are older than the 18th century. At the entrance of the chapel the solid 15th-century Renaissance marble parapet is decorated with vases, cornucopias and the Cybo symbols. ==Indulgence tablet==