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 1483–85 by Jacopo d'Arcangelo del Sellaio.
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, when "their eyes were opened, and they knew him".
In the far background is seen a contemporary Florentine cityscape bounded by green hills. This progression of picture planes, delineated architecturally, proceeding from the intimate to the public realm through a series of architectural gateways, marks the Birmingham painting as an exceptional work. It was long attributed to Sellaio's better-known master, Filippo Lippi. That attribution was affirmed by several experts in the 1930s. Critic Bernard Berenson identified it with Jacopo del Sellaio and compared it with his "Crucifixion with Saints" in the transept of of San Frediano in Cestello in Florence.
The painting was acquired for the Samuel H. Kress Collection in 1936 and was held by the National Gallery of Art from 1941 to 1951. It was loaned to the Birmingham Museum of Art by the Kress Foundation in 1952 and donated formally in 1961.
"Christ with the Symbols of the Passion" is reproduced as color plate XV in George Ferguson's authoritative "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