This impressive devotional image by a follower of Nardo di Cione presumably came from a Florentine monastery. It may originally have been placed above a door or as a lunette beneath an arch, or possibly in a niche above a tomb. Shown as the Man of Sorrows, at once dead and alive, Christ displays the wounds of his Passion.
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Title:Man of Sorrows
Artist:Niccolò di Tommaso (Italian, Florence, active 1343–76)
Date:ca. 1370
Geography:Made in Florence, Tuscany, Italy
Culture:Italian
Medium:Fresco transferred to canvas
Dimensions:Overall: 65 x 70 in. (165.1 x 177.8 cm)
Classification:Paintings-Canvas
Credit Line:The Cloisters Collection, 1925
Object Number:25.120.241
Inscription: (On cross): . i[esus] . n[azarenus] . r[ex] . i[udaeorum] (Jesus the Nazarene, king of the Jews [John 19:19])
George Grey Barnard American, New York (until 1925)
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Florentine Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum," June 15–August 15, 1971, no catalogue.
Description of the George Grey Barnard Cloisters. n.p., n.d. [ca. 1912]. no. 66.
Breck, Joseph. The Cloisters: A Brief Guide. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1926. p. 21, fig. 10.
Offner, Richard. Studies in Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century. New York: Frederic Fairchild Sherman, 1927. p. 101, fig. 8.
Rorimer, James J., and Margaret B. Freeman. The Cloisters: The Building and the Collection of Mediaeval Art, in Fort Tryon Park. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1938. p. 46, fig. 23.
Wehle, Harry B. A Catalogue of Paintings: Volume 1, Catalogue of Italian, Spanish and Byzantine Paintings. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1940. p. 13.
Meiss, Millard. Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951. no. 76, p. 124, fig. 125.
Allen, Josephine L., and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1954. p. 72.
Offner, Richard. "A Ray of Light on Giovanni del Biondo and Niccolò di Tommaso." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 7 (July 1956). p. 191.
Offner, Richard. The Fourteenth Century: Workshop of Bernardo Daddi. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Section 3, Vol. 8. New York: Institute of Fine Arts, 1958. no. 2, pp. 166, 223.
Rorimer, James J. The Cloisters: The Building and the Collection of Medieval Art in Fort Tryon Park. 3rd revised ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1963. p. 91.
Bologna, Ferdinando. I pittori alla corte angioina di Napoli, 1266-1414, e un riesame dell'arte nell'età fridericiana. Saggi e studi di storia dell'arte, Vol. 2. Rome: Ugo Bozzi, 1969. pp. 83, 111, 327, 330, fig. 7.
Zeri, Federico. Italian Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Florentine School. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1971. p. 35.
Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972. pp. 150, 358, 606.
Boskovits, Miklós. Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento. Florence: Edam, 1975. no. 108, pp. 202–3.
Schrader, J. L. "George Grey Barnard: The Cloisters and the Abbaye." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s., 37, no. 1 (Summer 1979). p. 30, fig. 40.
Baetjer, Katharine. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. Vol. 1. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980. p. 136.
Baetjer, Katharine. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. Vol. 2. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980. p. 9.
La Favia, Louis M. The Man of Sorrows: Its Origin and Development in Trecento Florentine Painting. Rome: Sanguis, 1980. pp. 74, 76, fig. 42.
Belting, Hans. Das Bild und sein Publikum im Mittelalter: Form und Funktion früher Bildtafeln der Passion. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1981. p. 118, fig. 36.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Notable Acquisitions, 1981-1982 (Metropolitan Museum of Art) (1982). p. 37.
Belting, Hans. L'arte e il suo pubblico: Funzione e forme delle antiche immagini della passione. Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1986. p. 84, illus.
Belting, Hans. The Image and its Public in the Middle Ages: Form and Function of Early Paintings of the Passion. New Rochelle: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1990. p. 74, fig. 36.
Baetjer, Katharine. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995. p. 8.
Husband, Timothy B. "Creating the Cloisters." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s., 70, no. 4 (Spring 2013). p. 13, fig. 21.
Attributed to the Master of Pedret (Spanish, Catalonia, 12th century)
ca. 1100
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