Deposition of Christ

Bassetti Marcantonio

(Verona 1586 - 1630)

The painter is documented as having been in Rome, together with Alessandro Turchi, at several work sites started by Scipione Borghese, for whom Marcantonio Bassetti made a number of easel works, such as this Deposition of Christ where the luminous highlights are reminiscent of a Venetian atmosphere.

Despite his loyalty to his training in the Verona area, with this painting, Bassetti is influenced by the Roman environment and Caravaggio. In the gestures of the figures there is something of Tintoretto, while the face of the Madonna in semi-darkness follows some examples by Girolamo Savoldo.

Object details

Commentary

This painting is documented as part of the Borghese collection beginning in 1693, mentioned in that year’s inventory as a work by one Martiniani, a name which was changed (1700) to Guercino and as such registered in the inventory of 1790, as well as in the fideicommissum listing of 1833. In 1893 Adolfo Venturi judged the work to be “a mere sketch, much neglected in form” and ascribed it to Alessandro Tiarini, an attribution later rejected by Roberto Longhi (1926) and Paola della Pergola (1955), who saw in it the hand of Marcantonio Bassetti and considered it a Caravaggesque achievement produced in Rome by the Veronese painter around 1616. This opinion was seconded by Anna Ottani Cavina (1974), who in the catalogue of the exhibition Cinquant'anni di pittura veronese (1580-1630) observed in the tragic halting of the action “references to Tintoretto and Veronese,” as well as Savoldian implications in the Virgin’s features. Furthermore, according to this scholar, here the Caravaggesque experience seems to be mediated by the work of Orazio Borgianni, Carlo Saraceni, and Hendrick ter Brugghen during his Roman decade (1604-14).

As Pier Luigi Fantelli (1974) has correctly observed, the ascription by Longhi and all other critics of this canvas to Bassetti’s first Roman period has laid the foundations for the comprehension of this artist’s pictorial development. Having arrived in Rome in 1614 together with Alessandro Turchi, he became one of Saraceni’s protégés, working as his assistant on the project of the Palazzo di Montecavallo. In fact, during his Roman sojourn his style, which conformed, to the Venetian pictorial tradition, was renewed following the example of Borgianni and achieving results comparable with those of Giovanni Serodine and Domenico Fetti, characterized by a rougher, cruder brushstroke (see Ivanoff 1970). These attainments are not very visible in the Borghese canvas, which may be placed at the beginning of his development, which ended in 1620, when the painter returned to Verona where he died in the plague of 1630.

This work depicts the deposition of Christ from the Cross, his body gradually lowered to the ground with pieces of linen purchased by Joseph of Arimathea and wrapped in a white shroud before being placed in the sepulchre. In fact, the scene depicts the exact moment in which the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalen are crying over Jesus’s lifeless body, which has been laid on the ground by Nicodemus, while Joseph of Arimathea is removing the pieces of cloth.    

Antonio Iommelli