Born in Rome of Florentine parents and trained there by Florentine artists, Domenico Fetti displayed a precocious skill for varying the thickness of oil paint from rich impasto to thin glazes. Following in the footsteps of the young Peter Paul Rubens, who had worked in Rome and served as court painter at Mantua, Fetti settled in Mantua in 1614 to take charge of Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga's famous collection (which soon was sold to Charles I of England). In addition to marvelous lifesize portraits and large religious canvases, Fetti produced a much admired series of relatively small paintings of New Testament parables, of which the Metropolitan purchased a fine example in 1991. This Salvator Mundi, painted on a panel the same size as the Metropolitan's The Parable of the Mote and the Beam (1991.153), demonstrates Fetti's originality: unlike earlier depictions of the Salvator Mundi, such as the Museum's unfinished painting by Albrecht Dürer of a half-length standing figure of Christ holding an orb symbolizing the world (32.100.64), Fetti's version shows Christ seated on clouds, soaring above a windswept landscape. Resting his right foot on one of the impish cherubs swarming about him, he gazes down at us and raises his hand in benediction.

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