Deposition (The Carrying of the Dead Christ to the Sepulchre)

Sanzio, Raphael

(Urbino 1483 - Rome 1520)

The panel, signed and dated in the bottom left-hand corner ‘Raphael Urbinas MDVII.’, was commissioned by Atalanta Baglioni as an altarpiece for her chapel in the church of San Francesco in Perugia, in which her son Grifonetto, killed during a fratricidal struggle for power over the seignory of Perugia, was already buried.

The work remained in the Umbrian city for a hundred years, until one night, with the complicity of the friars, it was secretly smuggled out and sent to Rome to Pope Paul V, who gifted it to his nephew Scipione Borghese (1608).

It was originally surmounted by a cymatium with the image of God the Father Blessing (Perugia, Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria) and accompanied by a predella depicting the Theological Virtues, now in the Vatican Museums.

The huge number of preparatory drawings documents the laborious evolution of the compositional project, made progressively more dramatic and dynamic in the new iconography of the ‘transport’. The compositional innovation of the Deposition marks the transition to a new expressive language, a prelude to the artist’s subsequent Roman phase.

Object details

Commentary

The famous panel painting by the Urbino artist retains the traditional name passed down by sources and inventories, although the event depicted refers to a moment following the Deposition from the Cross, that is, the Carrying of Christ’s Body to the Tomb.

The foreground shows the large-scale figures advancing towards the grotto that opens into the rocky backdrop on the left, set on a raised level accessed by climbing two steps, on which the signature and date 1507 in gold lettering stands out. The pale, luminous flesh of the beautiful body of Jesus, covered by a pale pink loincloth and lifted by the three bearers by means of strips of linen, emerges in the centre of the main group of figures amidst the bright colours of their robes. John, already on the mound, leans towards Christ with a sorrowful expression, while Mary Magdalene, the only woman in the group, hastens to hold Jesus’ hand. Just behind them, on the right, is the swooning Virgin comforted by three pious women: one, kneeling, turns towards her with a hasty gesture to support her by the armpits, the second holds her forehead and the third, her head turned towards the group around Christ, encircles her waist with her arms.

The landscape in the background unfolds between the two locations of the grotto and Mount Calvary, on which two soldiers point to the central cross still with the ladder resting on it and the Title of the Cross. In the mountainous landscape, furrowed by a valley through which a watercourse flows, one can make out a town, houses, and a castle on a hill – which has been tentatively identified as the castle of Antognolla (Oddi Baglioni 2010). Near a stretch of water, among willows and poplars, stand a couple and a horseman watering his horse.

The provenance of the panel and its arrival in the Borghese collection are well documented. The painting was commissioned from Raphael by Atalanta Baglioni for her chapel in the church of S. Francesco al Prato in Perugia, as corroborated by sources beginning with Vasari and historical documentation (the topic is summarised by Cooper 2010, and see Shearman 2003, II, pp. 77-78, 108-112; Garibaldi, Sperandio 2010, pp. 65-77). It was the main section of an altarpiece framed by a wooden structure, which included a predella with grisaille (monochrome) depictions of the Theological Virtues (Vatican City, Pinacoteca Vaticana, Inv. 40330, 40331, 40332), a frieze with putti and griffins and a cymatium with the Eternal Father in the act of Blessing (the original frieze, as well as the panel with the Eternal Father, are in Perugia, Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria – some say the panel was painted by Domenico Alfani based on a model of the original, others say it is a 17th-century copy by the Perugian painter Stefano Amadei).

Of particular interest to Cardinal Scipione Borghese – who must have been familiar with it, having attended the city’s university, – the Deposition was smuggled out of the church with the complicity of friars on the night of 18-19 March 1608, to arrive in Rome probably by the 20th of the same month. The abundant documentation relating to the event, listed by Paola Della Pergola (1959, pp. 116-120), is further elaborated on by Marina Minozzi (2006, pp. 103-109; 2023, pp. 27-30): the panel was taken to the Cardinal’s palace in Borgo where, by the following September, it had been fitted with a frame, made by the carpenter Vittorio Roncone and gilded by Rinaldo and Annibale Corradini. Around 1620, the work could be seen in the now-completed Palazzo di Ripetta. In 1809, it was taken to the Turin residence of Camillo Borghese and thence to Paris, to return to Rome in 1816. Following some damage suffered during transportation, restoration was assigned to Pietro Camuccini in the same year, while the frame, which is the current one, was restored the following year.

Apart from the interludes in Paris and Turin, the panel remained in the Palazzo in Rome, except for a possible temporary relocation in the mid-17th century to the Villa Pinciana, where it was described by Manilli in 1650, in the same years in which it was seen by Richard Symonds (1649-51) in the Palazzo. It was still listed in the Villa, in the Nota delli musei of 1664, while it was mentioned as being in the Palazzo again by Pietro de’ Sebastiani (1683). Perhaps we are dealing with one of the many copies that had been made over time, about which new research is underway. A copy had been commissioned by Scipione, together with five silver lamps, sent as a gift in partial compensation to the Perugia church. A payment to Giovanni Lanfranco for a copy of the painting is dated August 1608, of which we have no further information, while after the donation in 1609 of the lamps and the painting ‘manu alicuius periti pictoris’, local sources, at least from the 1770s, mentioned the copy by Cavalier d’Arpino in the church (Perugia, Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria).

There are numerous autograph drawings associated with the work, both general and detailed, that show a gradual evolution from the traditional iconography of the Lamentation to the dynamic version of the Carrying of the Dead Christ to the Sepulchre, which have been the subject of painstaking research (by, among others, Ferino Pagden 1983, 1986; Joannides 1983, 2006; Rovigatti Spagnoletti 1984; Kang, Kemp 2006; Herrmann Fiore 2010; Gnann 2017). On the other hand, the bibliography on Raphael’s panel from the 19th century to the present day is immense, including, in addition to the recapitulatory works by Meyer zur Capellen (2001, 2006), in-depth studies dedicated to the work by the Galleria Borghese (Ferrara, Staccioli, Tantillo 1972; Raffaello 1984; Coliva 2006; Herrmann Fiore 2010; Minozzi, Ciofetta 2023).

Many of the studies are aimed specifically at defining the formal genesis of the composition, which appears highly innovative. They trace possible iconographic parallels to the panel, in artists such as Signorelli – in particular, for the Lamentation in the chapel of San Brizio in Orvieto Cathedral – and Michelangelo – among the most obvious examples for comparison: the Vatican Pietà for the Christ, the Doni tondo for the kneeling woman, but also the Pietà in the National Gallery in London. Other affinities can be seen in the woodcuts of Dürer’s Great Passion and, strikingly, in the Deposition engraving by Mantegna, from around 1480. Settis (2006, 2013) made reference to Leon Battista Alberti’s theories and the example, suggested here, of the depiction of the death of Meleager taken from ancient reliefs as a model for an effective rendering of the image of death, as well as the carrying of the body. However, depicting the absence of life through the formal expedient of the inert fall of the arm, as we see with the body of Jesus represented in this panel, seems to have been a common device, from the Middle Ages onwards.

The representation of a dynamic and narrative episode such as the carrying of the body to the sepulchre introduced a revolutionary innovation in the conception of the altarpiece, where such subjects with a temporal development were traditionally housed in secondary spaces, such as the compartments of a predella. Whereas here an actual sacra rappresentazione [‘holy performance’, akin to Mystery plays in England and France] is placed on the altar for the worshipper’s devotion. It also includes the episode of the fainting of the Virgin, more frequently seen in the scenes of the Road to Calvary, Crucifixion and Lamentation, here closely linked to the moment of carrying the body to the tomb.

A contextual analysis of the composition, to which the recent diagnostic tests carried out on the panel (2019) have contributed significantly, offers further food for thought on the meaning of the scene and its relationship to its intended setting, as well as to the demands of the patrons. The two groups of figures were studied separately, as surviving drawings show, and this is precisely reflected in the method used by the artist and revealed by the investigations, which allows for the proportioning and ‘assembling’ of distinct parts of the composition – a geometric method already explored by Kang, Kemp (2006). The main group was painted first and none of the figures show any signs of modification, except for minor adjustments to the profiles; the only change, already known, being the removal of the female figure with her back turned, next to the Magdalene. This elimination has the result of accentuating the dynamism and focusing attention on the figure of Christ. The woman’s posture and function, however, must have been considered important by the artist, so much so that he decided, before executing the group of the Madonna, to use a similar approach to modify the profile of the woman standing on the left, who in the drawings was facing the Virgin. The newly conceived group of pious women, also unmodified, thus finds an effective visual correlation with the group carrying the body.

On the other hand, considerable reworking is apparent in the background, where various changes seem to reveal a greater focus on the definition of the buildings, with the castle moved further down, and Calvary, shifted to the right, being given greater dimensional development.

The choice of subject is closely related to the context of the Franciscan church for which it was intended. Raphael had already painted the altarpiece with the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin for the Oddi chapel here (Vatican City, Pinacoteca Vaticana), whose donor, Alessandra, was related to Atalanta Baglioni (Luchs 1983) – the subject was Marian, of great importance to the Franciscans. The church was the most important Franciscan centre in Perugia and the two chapels, Oddi and Baglioni, were in a prominent position near the transept and aligned with each other (Luchs 1983; Ettlinger 1986; Locher 1994; Cooper 2001, 2004, 2010; Borgnini 2005, 2010).

The account of the events following the Crucifixion and its protagonists had also been extremely popular in Franciscan circles since the Middle Ages, and its influence in the figurative arts has been widely examined by scholars (see especially Bologna 2006). The spread of such themes is closely linked to the numerous small-format editions of devotional texts, in Latin and translated into the vernacular, such as the well-known Meditationes Vitae Christi, a late medieval text based on the Gospel of Nicodemus, attributed to a direct witness of those events. The Meditationes dwell on the description of Mary’s sorrow for the suffering inflicted on her Son and describe the various occasions on which she breaks down at specific moments of the Passion. Franciscan devotion tends towards the recognition and sublimation of the personal pain of the faithful through the imitation of Christ and the mediation of Mary. Indeed, we find similar extreme dramatic effects in the widespread tradition of the Mystery Play-like performance known as the sacra rappresentazione).

Indeed, the last of these events is depicted in the panel: when, after much insistence on the part of John, urged on by Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, Mary lets go of the body of her much-lamented Son, who is lifted and carried to the tomb: at that sight, the Virgin faints once again. It is remarkable that, at a time when official doctrine tended to discourage such a representation as inappropriate (Hamburg 1981, pp. 45-75, describes the contemporary literature hostile to such a topic – including the 1506 treatise De Spasmo Beatae Virginis Mariae by the Dominican Thomas de Vio – which, however, had no significant impact at least until the Counter-Reformation; Penny 2004, pp. 25-28; see Ciofetta 2023, pp. 42-43 and note 10), while in Raphael’s panel the episode is faithfully represented, demonstrating the fundamental link with the intended Franciscan setting.

Within this context, the identification of the two figures on either side of John with the other two leading characters in the narrative, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, appears logical, with the latter, a converted Jew distinguished by his yellow cloak and Jesus’ secret apostle, playing the role of evangelist, witness and author of the account of these events. The two, described as such by Francucci (1613), have not been unanimously recognised in the literature on the painting, sometimes mistaken for each other and sometimes generically defined as ‘bearers’. It has even been suggested that the figure to the right of John is St Peter (Spivey 2001, Coliva 2006 and 2023, Herrmann Fiore 2010); however, such a character would imply the existence of a relationship with the Roman Church, which in such a specifically focused context seems less likely.

The reason for the commission of the work was the new decoration of Atalanta Baglioni’s funeral chapel in San Francesco, donated in 1499 by her mother to her and her grandson: Grifonetto was already buried there and Atalanta was also to be, according to her testamentary wishes, the will being drawn up in 1509 after the completion of the chapel decoration work and dowry arrangements (Cooper 2001 pp. 554-561). The violent death of Grifonetto in a family feud in 1500, indicated as the reason for the commission since the 19th century with Burckhardt (1860, pp. 31-32) also on the basis of Vasari’s account, is in fact an interesting but chronologically implausible suggestion. The chapel is a place designed to give public dignity and evidence of its patrons’ faith in eternal salvation. Therefore, the idealised identification with the Virgin’s maternal suffering appears plausible, especially given Franciscan devotion to be seen in the family’s loyalty to the church; just as the young, deceased son, as an allegorical intercession, might be alluding to the central figure, a noble image, certainly of this world, but projecting his gaze towards a salvific celestial dimension. Indeed, it might not be too fanciful, in this perspective, to see the group of the couple and the horseman in the background as an imaginary family reunion in the afterlife.

The panel underwent major diagnostic tests and restoration work in 1972, when the I.C.R., in a remarkable conservation operation, freed it from the heavy metal structure applied to the back by Luigi Lais in the last decades of the 19th century. Since then, the panel has not suffered any major damage. In 1995, it was subject to conservation and diagnostic tests, and in 2004-2005, aesthetic restoration work, including cleaning, was carried out. In 2019, an advanced diagnostic campaign was carried out, followed by a restoration operation consisting of an aesthetic intervention on the painted surface and, most importantly, a substantial preventive conservation operation. This involved the total detachment of the wooden support from the previous support system and the application of a continuous monitoring system of physical conditions and climatic parameters.

Simona Ciofetta