Christ Presented to the People (Ecce Homo)

[Giovanni Battista Camuccini, Palazzo Cesi, Rome, by about 1851–53; ms. cat., about 1851, room 3, no. 6, as "Gesù presentato al Popolo," by Gio. Paolo Lomazzo; sold to Northumberland]; Algernon Percy, 4th Duke of Northumberland, Northumberland House, London, later Alnwick Castle (from 1853); [Agnew, London, until 1969; sold to Lunde]; Asbjorn R. Lunde, New York, later Riverdale, N.Y. (1969–96)

Tito Barberi. Catalogo ragionato della Galleria Camuccini in Roma. [ca. 1851], room 3, picture no. 6 [manuscript copies in the archive of the Camuccini heirs at Cantalupo and in the Alnwick Castle Archives], as "Gesù presentato al Popolo," by Gio. Paolo Lomazzo.

Keith Christiansen in "Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 1996–1997." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 55 (Fall 1997), p. 27, ill. (color), attributes it to Sodoma and dates it to the last decade of his career.

The frame is from Siena and dates to about 1540 (see Additional Images, figs. 1–3). A cassetta type frame made of poplar, it is water gilded overall and retains its lap joins in the frieze on the upper left and lower right corners. The sight edge molding is ornamented with a row of carved pearls flanked by an ogee on the inside and a stepped cavetto on the other side. Carved cauliculi arabesques scroll along the frieze interrupted on each of four sides only by an irregularly placed mascaron. These masks would have served as a center point of the carving design before the frame was reduced in size, evident now in the strong mitre cuts visible at the lower left and upper right. A small hollow rises to the half round top edge which slopes back in a hollow to the straight side. The present gilding may have been applied in the nineteenth century.

[Timothy Newbery with Cynthia Moyer 2017; further information on this frame can be found in the Department of European Paintings files]