The painting interprets the Gospel story of the ascent to Calvary, with Jesus crowned with thorns loaded with the cross by a group of minions who crowd around him, occupying almost the entire surface of the painting. Federico Zeri proposed in 1984 to assign the work, dating it to the end of the 16th century, to Giovanni Battista Cremonini, a painter from Cento and owner of a school. It is a very widespread subject in painting between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with a purely devotional intonation: the Christ carrying the cross intently stares at the viewer, involving him emotionally, while the soldiers who crowd around Jesus manifest a mannerist style that accentuates through the diagonals and an almost rotary rhythm the dramatic dimension of the episode.