The Dead Christ with Mary Magdalene and Angels

Turchi Alessandro called Orbetto

(Verona 1578 - Rome 1649)

Critics believe that this painting was executed by Alessandro Turchi, called Orbetto, between 1616 and 1617, the years in which he received several payments from Scipione Borghese for works that the documentation does not identify. This was certainly one of the first compositions painted by the Veronese artist in Rome. It is executed on slate, a type of black stone widely used in Verona that gives paintings a sparkling effect. It depicts the Dead Christ surrounded by angels and Mary Magdalene, who holds up one of his hands.

The theatricality of the gestures highlights the pathos of the scene, representing that ideal of composure and harmony to which Turchi always remained faithful during his career. The artist participated in that genre of illuminated nocturnal settings practised by  Carlo Saraceni, Gerrit van Honthorst and a number of French painters present in Rome in those years.

Object details

Commentary

Three paintings by Alessandro Turchi, including a ‘Dead Christ on stone’ – which undoubtedly corresponds to the work in question – were mentioned by Iacomo Manilli in his 1650 account of the artworks at the Casino di Porta Pinciana. In all likelihood, these compositions came into the possession of the Borghese family in 1617, when the painter received two payment instalments from Scipione for several works which the documentation does not identify (Della Pergola 1955). It is in fact certain that Turchi was among the artists most appreciated by the cardinal, who commissioned a number of works to him: the Raising of Lazarus (inv. no. 506), Christ in the Sepulchre (inv. no. 307), the lost Saint Peter and the Servant Girl, the series of frescoes in the Casino del Barco, the Gathering of Manna for the Sala Reggia of the Quirinal Palace, and in 1619 a painting for the chapel of his villa in Mondragone.

In spite of Manilla’s account and the 1693 inventory – in which the description of the work is even more precise – this refined Dead Christ was mistakenly ascribed to Annibale Carracci in 1700, an error repeated in subsequent inventories (Inv. 1790, Inventario Fidecommissario 1833). Only in 1893 did Adolfo Venturi revive the attribution to Turchi, whose name all subsequent critics have accepted without reservations (see, most recently, Scaglietti Kelescian 2019). Dated to ‘roughly 1615’ by Roberto Longhi (1928), this work on slate betrays a certain familiarity with a painting with the same subject by Felice Brusasorzi, held today in a private collection in Rovereto (see the Deposition with Angels, in Cinquant'anni di pittura veronese 1580-1630, fig. 52). Like that painting, Turchi here arranges the scene by placing the figures in a semicircle around the beautiful body of Christ, whose pose undoubtedly alludes to Annibale Carracci’s Pietà (Museo di Capodimonte, Naples) and Brusasorzi’s Deposition with Mary Magdalene (Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona); from the latter work, Orbetto in fact took the gesture of the angel who holds up the hand of the martyr. Finally, it is interesting to note the presence of a source of artificial light within the scene, in this case the angel holding a torch: this motif was yet another borrowing from Brusasorzi’s Deposition in Rovereto.

A variant of this painting (see Dossi 2013) was mentioned in 1624 in the context of the Patrizi collection in Rome; here it was described as a ‘work of the Dead Christ with Mary Magdalene and three angels on Lydian stone, by Alessandro Veronese, with an ebony frame, 20 scudi’ (Minozzi 2000).

Antonio Iommelli