Christ as the Man of Sorrows

Giovanni Santi was a prominent poet, writer and painter at the ducal court of Federico da Montefeltro in Urbino and was father of the celebrated Italian Renaissance painter, Raphael. The Urbino court brought Santi into contact with Flemish painters such as Joos van Ghent and Pedro Berruguete, whose northern influence can be seen in his own works, and with Perugino, in whose workshop Raphael would later work. He also met Piero della Francesca and is said to have hosted the artist during his sojourn in the city. Santi ran a large and productive workshop which became a bustling center for humanist culture in Urbino, monopolizing the market for painting in the city after the 1480s (Valazzi, 2009, op. cit.).

The iconography of Christ as the Man of Sorrows, so diffuse in Flemish painting, was also popular in Italy throughout the fifteenth century and Santi and his workshop produced numerous such images to satisfy demand. Santi’s compositions contemplating the dead Christ often followed similar formats with some variations, at times including the edges of the stone tomb or the instruments of the Passion, such as the Pietà in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino, or with angels supporting his lifeless body as in the example now in the Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest. Paintings like the present panel, which is relatively small in scale, were used either for private devotion in a domestic setting or for individual worship within a church.

Professor Filippo Todini pointed out before the 2013 sale of this painting that there is a probable pendant, depicting Saint Anthony of Padua, in a private collection (loc. cit.).