Lot Essay
This hitherto unpublished picture is a distinguished addition to the series of treatments of the subject by Palmezzano. The type of the Christ, without the tormentor and against a plain background, first occurs in a signed and dated picture of 1503 at Bonn. Variants of the Bonn picture, both signed, are in the Vatican (Rassegna d'Arte, April 1916, fig. 8) and at Temple Newsam House, Leeds (Courtauld Institute negative B91/469 PS): the latter panel is dated 1535. The present picture probably dates from the second decade of the cinquecento. A variant or pastiche, stated to have been signed, was in the Mobili di S. Giovanni sale, Geri, Milan, 29 April-2 May 1929, lot 20, illustrated: the panel was of the same format, but the mouth of the tormentor is distended, his left hand introduced to the left of the cartellino and the landscape somewhat simplified. An undoubtedly autograph variant of wider format, in which a road is introduced between the two figures and the three crosses shown on a hill bore the tormentor's head, is recorded (B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, Central Italian and Northern Italian Schools, 1968, 3, pl. 1005 as homeless): this would appear to postdate the present panel. A number of other pictures of differing designs of the subject are considered to be by Palmezzano, including panels in the Bob Jones University, Greenville and Palazzo Spada, Rome.