Crucifix with Man Kneeling, 1929

Wood engraving (Physick 599), USA edition 4/5,

Gift of Ward and Laurel Gasque

Crucifix with Man Kneeling was one of numerous illustrations Gill created for a four-volume edition of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (c. 1400), published by Golden Cockerel Press in 1929-31. A leafy plant motif appears throughout Gill's illustrations for this publication, often weaving around and into Chaucer's text. Here, however, where this plant motif joins crucifixion imagery, it invokes the long tradition of depicting the cross as a Tree of Life.