Christ as the Suffering Redeemer (Mantegna)
Encyclopedia
The Christ as the Suffering Redeemer is a painting by the Italian Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 artist Andrea Mantegna
Andrea Mantegna
Andrea Mantegna was an Italian painter, a student of Roman archeology, and son in law of Jacopo Bellini. Like other artists of the time, Mantegna experimented with perspective, e.g., by lowering the horizon in order to create a sense of greater monumentality...

, dated to c. 1488-1500 and housed in the Statens Museum for Kunst
Statens Museum for Kunst
Statens Museum for Kunst is the Danish national gallery located in Copenhagen....

, Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

.

History

The work is generally assigned to Mantegna's stay in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, due to stylistic similarities with the Madonna of the Quarry, although other art historians considered it from the 1490s.

The painting appears in an inventory of the Gonzaga family from 1627, and it belonged to cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga
Silvio Valenti Gonzaga
Silvio Valenti Gonzaga was an Italian nobleman and Catholic priest.Gonzaga was born in Mantua. He was elevated to the rank of cardinal in 1738 by Pope Clement XII. On the 15 May 1747 he was given the titular church of San Callisto...

 in 1763 when it became part of the Danish Royal, having been acquired by King Frederick IV of Denmark
Frederick IV of Denmark
Frederick IV was the king of Denmark and Norway from 1699 until his death. Frederick was the son of King Christian V of Denmark and Norway and Charlotte Amalie of Hesse-Kassel .-Foreign affairs:...

 to make his collection equal to those of other European reigning families.

Description

The painting is signed on the edge of the marble base (ANDREAS MANTINIA) and his an original version of the traditional Pietà
Pietà
The Pietà is a subject in Christian art depicting the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus, most often found in sculpture. As such, it is a particular form of the Lamentation of Christ, a scene from the Passion of Christ found in cycles of the Life of Christ...

theme. Christ, portrayed with open hands to show all the wounds of the crucifixion, is raised on finely sculpted ancient sarcophagus.

His body is wrapped in a metallic white drape, and his supported by two kneeling angels (a seraphim] and a cherubim). On the left the tomb's cover is visible, while the background is occupied by a far landscape under the sunset light. On the right is the Calvary
Calvary
Calvary or Golgotha was the site, outside of ancient Jerusalem’s early first century walls, at which the crucifixion of Jesus is said to have occurred. Calvary and Golgotha are the English names for the site used in Western Christianity...

 and a quarry in which two men are working a slab, a column and a statue. Two further workers can be seen in a grotto, illuminated by an internal source of light. Finally, on the left are fields with shepherds and cattle and a walled city, Jerusalem, at the feet of a rocky spur. Two Pious Women run a path to reach Jesus' tomb.

Sources

  • La Grande Storia dell'Arte - Il Quattrocento, Il Sole 24 Ore
    Il Sole 24 Ore
    Il Sole 24 Ore is an Italian national daily business newspaper owned by Confindustria, the Italian employers' federation.It was founded on 1965-11-09 as a merger between Il Sole, founded in 1865, and 24 Ore, founded in 1946. The headquarters are in Milan...

    , 2005
  • Kleiner, Frank S. Gardner's Art Through the Ages, 13th Edition, 2008
  • Manca, Joseph. Andrea Mantegna and the Italian Renaissance, 2006



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