Christ as the Man of Sorrows

Wrapped in his winding sheet for burial, the dead Christ is displayed for veneration. His arms overlap a parapet to establish a closer link with the viewer-worshipper. The picture must have formed part of an altarpiece, possibly as the crowning element. Zoppo was trained in the same studio in Padua as Andrea Mantegna, but he spent most of his career in Venice. He is one of the great eccentrics of fifteenth-century Italian painting and his wiry, sometimes contorted, but always expressive figures were much appreciated by humanist writers and patrons.