It was presented at Galleries of Italy - Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano, museum headquarters of Intesa Sanpaolo in Naples, the exhibition of the work of Botticelli Lamentation over the dead Christ, from the Museo Poldi Pezzoli diMilano.
The exhibition, curated by Alessandro Cecchi, will be open to the public from the 22 June to the 29 September 2019.
The arrival of Botticelli's work from Milan marks the ninth edition of the review The Illustrious Guest which offers, in the Intesa Sanpaolo exhibition venues - the Gallerie d'Italia and the 36th floor of the Turin skyscraper - a major work on temporary loan from prestigious Italian and foreign museums.
Michele Coppola, Executive Director of Art, Culture and Historical Heritage of Intesa Sanpaolo, he says: «A new “illustrious guest” welcomed into our Gallerie d'Italia in Naples, thanks to the relationship of exchange and collaboration with the Poldi Pezzoli Museum, is the masterpiece of a great master of the Italian Renaissance, Sandro Botticelli. The extraordinary Lamentation from the collections of the prestigious Milanese museum is further embellished by the dialogue with a painting by Pedro Fernández on loan from Capodimonte. The ninth edition of the exhibition thus consolidates the synergy of Intesa Sanpaolo with two important national museum institutions and confirms how the Illustrious Guest is an opportunity to admire works of exceptional beauty and to deepen the study and knowledge of Italian art, in full harmony with the vision of the Culture Project of our Bank.»
Botticelli's work Lamentation over the dead Christ it depicts with extraordinary emotional participation the moment in which Jesus, after being detached from the cross on Golgotha, is about to be placed in the tomb. The body of Christ lies in the foreground, on the lap of the Mother who, overwhelmed by her pain, has fainted and is supported by Saint John the Evangelist. Of the three pious women, Mary Magdalene, wrapped in a red cloth and with her eyes closed, enthusiastically embraces the wounded feet of the Savior. The second of hers, standing, holds the head of Jesus in her hands, while a third of hers has withdrawn to her left and is weeping, disconsolate, with her face hidden by her mantle. Joseph of Arimathea appears at the top of the composition and shows the symbols of the Passion to heaven, consisting of the crown of thorns and the three nails removed from the cross and from the body of Christ.
Datable to the early sixteenth century, the work, one of the greatest examples of Botticelli's mature production, is identified with the painting described in 1568 by Giorgio Vasari on an altar in the Florentine church of Santa Maria Maggiore. It was purchased on 12 March 1879 by Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli, the noble collector and founder of the Milanese house-museum.
To recall the close relations between Florence and Naples between the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, a work on a similar theme is exhibited - in comparison with Botticelli's Lamentation - created in the same period of time, preserved in the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte in Naples : it is about the Transport of Christ to the tomb by Pedro Fernandez, which, although starting from different figurative premises, touches in the agitated rhythm of the forms and in the pathetic charge of the characters an intensity not far from the peaks reached by the Florentine master.
The panel constitutes the central compartment of the predella of the large two-order polyptych which, until the mid-eighteenth century, was on the high altar of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Caponapoli. When the polyptych was dismembered following the Napoleonic suppressions, the table arrived in 1811 at the Bourbon picture gallery and, from there, in the Capodimonte Museum.
In previous editions of the review The Illustrious Guest, four masterpieces followed one another at the Galleries of Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano in Naples, the Portrait of a man by Antonello da Messina from Palazzo Madama in Turin (2015-2016), theHarlequin with mirrorby Picasso from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid (2016), The Musicians by Caravaggio from the Metropolitan Museum of New York (2017),The Scapiliata by Leonardo Da Vinci from the Monumental Complex of the Pilotta in Parma (2018), while at the Galleries of Palazzo Leoni Montanari in Vicenza it was exhibited The Transfiguration by Bellini from the Museum and Real Bosco di Capodimonte in Naples (2016). At the Intesa Sanpaolo skyscraper in Turin the Portrait of Count Antonio da Porcia by Titian from the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan (2017), the Madonna and Child by Bronzino from Capodimonte (2017-2018) and theAdoration of the Shepherds by the Spanish painter Juan Bautista Maíno from the Hermitage in St. Petersburg (2018-2019).
The catalog of the exhibition Botticelli. Lamentation over the dead Christ is published by Marsilio Editore and contains critical essays by the curator Alessandro Cecchi and an intervention by Riccardo Naldi.
