Christ with Instruments of the Passion
Christ with Instruments of the Passion is the title of a devotional panel painting in the Samuel H. Kress Collection at the Birmingham Museum of Art. The tempera on wood panel, 26 3/8" x 20", was painted about 1485 by Jacopo di Arcangelo da Sellaio. It was loaned to the museum by the Kress Foundation in 1952 and donated formally in 1961.
Sellaio (c. 1441-1493) was a Florentine artist who studied under Filippo Lippi and was influenced by Sandro Botticelli. He joined the Compagnia di San Luca in Florence in 1460 and later shared a studio with Filippo di Giuliano. Sellaio executed Classically-influenced scenes from mythology on numerous painted cassoni (ornamented chests) as well as numerous small devotional panels depicting Christian subjects.
In the foreground of this painting, Christ displays his wounds and crown of thorns while other artifacts of his crucifixion: a sponge, iron nails, and a scourge, are arrayed on a narrow shelf before him. At a table in the near background, Christ again appears as the stranger entertained at the "supper at Emmaus", described in Luke 24, during which the resurrected Christ is not recognized by two of his disciples until they see him break the bread for the meal.
In the far background is seen a typical Florentine cityscape
The painting is first documented in the collection of telegraphy pioneer John Watkins Brett in London. It was exhibited at Burlington House in 1877 and in London's New Gallery in 1893-94 as a work of Filippino Lippi. Salomon Reinach attributed the work to "the school of Fra Filippo Lippi" in his Réportoire de Paintures du Moyen Âge et de la Renaissance 1280-1580, published in Paris in 1905. It passed to J. F. Austen, who sold it at Christie's on July 10, 1931 as a Filippo Lippi painting, despite Berenson's contemporary opinion assigning it to his anonymous "Stratonice Master". Kress obtained it from Count Contini-Bonacossi of Florence, Italy in 1954.
"Christ with the Symbols of the Passion" is reproduced as color plate XV in George Ferguson's "Signs and Symbols in Christian Art", published in 1954 by the Oxford University Press.
References
- "The Samuel H. Kress Collection" (1959) Birmingham: Birmingham Museum of Art
External links
- Italian art at artsbma.org