Direct observation of bodies—often in deliberately challenging and sometimes unflattering poses and points of view—was a hallmark of the academy led by the Carracci family in 1580s Bologna. Combining scholarly discourse with an emphasis on drawing from the live model, their academy was a crucible for a generation of artists who would pioneer Baroque painting in Rome. The lack of idealization in Ludovico’s depiction of Christ shocked sixteenth-century critics; the Virgin Mary’s head is thrown back in an experimental pose that results in the most powerful face among the stylized frieze of mourners. Artists frequently reused canvases, but in this unusual instance, Ludovico painted on three pieces of tablecloth stitched together.
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Credit Line:Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace and The Annenberg Foundation Gifts; Harris Brisbane Dick, Rogers, and Gwynne Andrews Funds; Pat and John Rosenwald, Mark Fisch and Rachel Davidson, and Jon and Barbara Landau Gifts; Gift of Mortimer D. Sackler, Theresa Sackler and Family; and Victor Wilbour Memorial, Marquand, The Alfred N. Punnett Endowment, and Charles B. Curtis Funds, 2000
Object Number:2000.68
The Artist: For a biography of Ludovico Carracci, see the Catalogue Entry for The Denial of Saint Peter (L.2002.22)
The Picture: Christ is shown laid out on a cloth, mourned by his mother, who has fallen back in a swoon and is supported by two female companions, Saint John, who, holding the ends of the sheet, gazes sorrowfully at the dead body, and Mary Magdalen, who cradles Jesus’s hand and cries, tears coursing down her cheeks. Behind then is a grotto with plants where Christ will be buried. The picture has been conceived as a meditation on Christ’s death, with his body close to the picture plane, in close proximity to the viewer, who is encouraged by this to participate empathetically. In this way, the picture embraces a specifically emotive approach that characterizes devotional practice during the Baroque period, whether the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius Loyola (composed 1522–24) or the Saint Matthew Passion of Johann Sebastian Bach (composed in 1727).
Patron and the Carracci Reform of Painting: Painted about 1582–83 for Alessandro Tanari (1548–1639), who was to become a principal patron of Ludovico's, The Met's Lamentation is a landmark in the Carracci's program to reform painting by emphasizing working from the posed model as well as the study of the great painters of northern Italy. It is listed in an inventory of the Tanari collection drawn up in 1640 and is mentioned as well by our major source on Bolognese painting, Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1678, vol. 1, p. 495). For more information on the Tanari collection, see the entry for The Denial of Saint Peter (L.2002.22)
A drawing alternatively attributed to Ludovico or to Annibale Carracci (private collection: see fig. 1 above) shows a young model posed almost identically to that of the Christ but viewed from a different angle. A piece of cloth has been draped over some boxes to enable the model's legs to be arranged in the apposite position. The fact that the drawing is taken from an angle different from that of Christ in the painting suggests that another drawing of the same model was made from a position more to the right. In the Carracci's academy it would have been common for a number of artists to work from the same posed model simultaneously, each from a slightly different position. We might imagine the drawing that has come down to us as having been done by the young Annibale, while that of his older cousin, Ludovico, is lost. Be that as it may, Ludovico did not merely transfer the pose to his canvas, he was attentive as well to the play of light across the head and the description of the crown of thorns. Such details are indications of a new manner of visualizing the subject, for Ludovico has imagined with almost graphic intensity what Christ's broken body might appear like when taken down from the cross. He has not flinched at showing the left arm as though dislocated from the shoulder and the right hand mangled. Only in the painting do we begin to understand why the boxes beneath the model were arranged in the way they were, for among the most expressive elements in the picture is the arc of Christ's chest.
Stylistic Considerations: Ludovico's Lamentation was an extremely experimental picture, created more in the spirit of pictorial reform than of the affirmation of an established style. The figures of the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalen, two holy women, and Saint John seem almost to have wandered into the painting from another, earlier era. The Virgin Mary is shown as an aged women, her ashen features and limp hand meant to affirm her role as participant in Christ's passion (note the brilliant contrast of the Virgin's hand with Christ's and the way the Virgin's pallor echoes Christ's). Similarly, the face of Saint John is beautifully modeled in a shaft of light—the same light that falls across Christ's body. But the figures do not have the weight or individual character of the Christ. Mary Magdalen, with her pursed lips and luxuriant hair, owes more to pictorial conventions than to any notion of reality. Moreover, the grouping of these figures is curiously flat and frieze-like, and Christ's very real-seeming body reads almost like an insertion into what had started as an altogether more conventional work. Few paintings serve as a more eloquent testament to the experimental nature of early Baroque naturalism and the audacity necessary to introduce it into a religious work.
In keeping with the experimental nature of the picture, it was painted on three irregular pieces of worn table linen that have been stitched together. X-rays reveal that the cloth, with a diamond-shaped pattern, had a number of holes that have been darned.
Keith Christiansen 2010
conte Alessandro Tanari, palazzo Tanari, Bologna (until d. 1639; inv., 1640); his son, marchese Giovanni Nicolò Tanari, palazzo Tanari (from 1639); by descent to Sebastiano Tanari, palazzo Tanari (until d. 1809; inv., 1809); Tanari family, palazzo Tanari (1809–at least 1825; probably sold shortly thereafter); Guido Ravenna, Bologna; his son, Enrico Ravenna, Bologna, Rome, and Buenos Aires (by 1940–d. 1986); his son, Guido Ravenna, Buenos Aires (1986–99; sold to Stromboni); [Jean-Jacques Stromboni, Buenos Aires, 1999–2000; sale, Christie's, New York, January 27, 2000, no. 74, to Salander for The Met]
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions," October 24, 2008–February 1, 2009, online catalogue.
Inventory of the palazzo Tanari. May 9, 1640, c. 59v, c. 64r [Archivio di Stato, Bologna; published in Ciammitti 1985, pp. 208, 216; Getty no. I-1862], lists it as "una pittura d'uno Cristo Morto la Beata Vergine San Giovanni et le Madalene di mano di Ludovico Carazzi con cornice nera" and as "Una pietà di Ludovico Carazzi," valuing it at 300 ducatoni.
Carlo Cesare Malvasia. Felsina pittrice: vite de' pittori bolognesi. Bologna, 1678, vol. 1, p. 495, lists this picture as "Cristo morto con la B.V. e S. Giovanni," among the works of Ludovico in the palazzo Tanari.
Marcello Oretti. Le pitture che si vedono nelle case e palazzi de nobili della città di Bologna. ca. 1760–80, fol. 140 [Biblioteca Comunale, Bologna; ms. B. 104], lists it in the Casa Tanari, via di Galliera, as "Christo morto con la Madonna e S. Giovanni".
Inventory of Sebastiano Tanari. April 4, 1809, c. 102r [Archivio di Stato, Bologna], as "Cristo morto con la B.V. San Giovanni, ed altre figure di Lodovico Carracci, con qualche patimento e ritocco, L. 859,62".
Ferdinando Belvisi. Elogio storico del pittore Lodovico Caracci. Bologna, 1825, p. 53, lists it as with "Signori Marchesi Tanara" [sic].
Heinrich Bodmer. Lodovico Carracci. Burg b[ei]. Magdeb[urg]., 1939, p. 139, lists it with losts works of Ludovico.
Emilia Calbi and Daniela Scaglietti Kelescian, ed. Marcello Oretti e il patrimonio artistico privato bolognese. Bologna, 1984, p. 68.
Gail Feigenbaum. "Lodovico Carracci: A Study of His Later Career and A Catalogue of His Paintings." PhD diss., Princeton University, 1984, p. 497, lists it as a lost work by Ludovico, mistakenly calling the support copper.
Luisa Ciammitti. "Ercole Roberti: La cappella Garganelli in San Pietro." Tre artisti nella Bologna dei Bentivoglio. Vol. 2, Bologna, 1985, pp. 208, 216, no. 49, publishes the 1640 inventory of the Tanari palace in via Galliera, Bologna.
Keith Christiansen. "Ludovico Carracci's Newly Recovered 'Lamentation'." Burlington Magazine 142 (July 2000), pp. 416–22, figs. 1, 4, 5 (color, overall and details), calls Alessandro Tanari one of Ludovico's earliest and most ardent patrons; associates with the figure of Christ two chalk studies (figs. 6 and 7), one tentatively ascribed to Annibale (whereabouts unknown) and the other given to Ludovico (Wallraf Richartz Museum, Cologne); suggests a date of about 1582–86, close in date to Ludovico's "Vision of Saint Francis" (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) of about 1583–86, in which the figure of the Christ Child is similarly foreshortened, but notes that the MMA painting's "haphazardly experimental and disjunctive" visual language argues for a still earlier date of about 1582.
Important Old Master Paintings. Christie's, New York. January 27, 2000, pp. 138–41, no. 74, ill. in color (overall and two details), identify this painting as Ludovico's lost "Lamentation" from the Tanari collection.
Alessandro Brogi. Ludovico Carracci. Bologna, 2001, vol. 1, pp. 13, 105–6, no. 5; vol. 2, figs. 6–7 (overall and detail), dates it about 1583 and considers the related drawing of a model to be by Ludovico rather than Annibale; suggests that it was intended for a private chapel.
Massimo Pirondini inLeonello Spada (1576–1622). Manerba, 2002, pp. 32, 72 n. 177, ill., relates it to Leonello Spada's lost painting of the same subject, formerly in the Palazzo Chigi, Rome.
Keith Christiansen. "A Late Masterpiece by Ludovico Carracci: The Tanari 'Denial of St Peter'." Burlington Magazine 145 (January 2003), p. 23.
Marinella Pigozzi inIl corpo in scena: i trattati di anatomia della Biblioteca Comunale Passerini-Landi. Exh. cat., Biblioteca Comunale Passerini-Landi. Piacenza, 2005, pp. 25–27, fig. 12.
Keith Christiansen. "Going for Baroque: Bringing 17th-Century Masters to the Met." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 62 (Winter 2005), pp. 17, 22, 26, 33, 39, fig. 19 (color).
Daniele Benati inAnnibale Carracci. Ed. Daniele Benati and Eugenio Riccòmini. Exh. cat., Museo Civico Archeologico, Bologna. Milan, 2006, p. 129.
Keith Christiansen inPhilippe de Montebello and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1977–2008. New York, 2009, p. 37.
Michel Hilaire inCorps et ombres: Caravage et le caravagisme européen. Ed. Michel Hilaire and Axel Hémery. Exh. cat., Musée Fabre, Montpellier and Musée des Augustins, Toulouse. Milan, 2012, p. 300, fig. 1.
Keith Christiansen. "La création tardive d'une collection de peintures baroques au Metropolitan Museum of Art / Creating a Baroque Collection at the Metropolitan Late in the Game." Aux origines d'un goût: la peinture baroque aux États-Unis / Creating the Taste for Baroque Painting in America. Paris, 2015, pp. 67, 72, fig. 2 (color, gallery installation).
Michael Fried. After Caravaggio. New Haven, 2016, p. 21, fig. 20 (color).
Kathryn Calley Galitz. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings. New York, 2016, p. 279, no. 196, ill. pp. 196, 279 (color).
Alessandro Brogi. Ludovico Carracci: Addenda. Bologna, 2016, pp. 24, 31 n. 33, pp. 32, 36–37, 47 n. 76, pl. 6.
Andrea Bayer. "Better Late than Never: Collecting Baroque Painting at The Metropolitan Museum of Art." Buying Baroque: Italian Seventeenth-Century Paintings Come to America. Ed. Edgar Peters Bowron. University Park, Pa., 2017, p. 137.
Keith Christiansen inDentro Caravaggio. Ed. Rossella Vodret. Exh. cat., Palazzo Reale. Milan, 2017, pp. 241, 243, fig. 5 (color).
The frame is from Bologna and dates to about 1582–90 (see figs. 2–5 above). This refined cassetta type frame is made of poplar and retains not only its original lap joined corners with applied mitre cut moldings but its original water gilding on a reddish-brown bole. Carved husks at the sight edge overlap to center points. The frieze is ornamented in Sansovinesque paterae at the centers, paterae at the corners, and rosettes applied to both. In between, an orderly pattern of punched field strapwork decorates the gilding. The top edge is ornamented in a double twisted ribbon that also emanates from center points. The outer hollow and ovolo then step to a vertical side molding. The frame’s place of origin and unaltered construction suggest that it was made for this painting.
Timothy Newbery with Cynthia Moyer 2017; further information on this frame can be found in the Department of European Paintings files
Ludovico Carracci (Italian, Bologna 1555–1619 Bologna)
ca. 1585–90
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