Christ as Man of Sorrows (Vir Dolorum) with Instruments of the Passion
Provenance
Private collection, Italy
with Moretti Fine Art, London, 2007
with Jean-Francois Heim, Paris, by 2010
with Moretti Fine Art, London
The Alana Collection, Delaware, by 2012
New York, Sotheby’s, 22 May 2019, lot 12
Acquired from the sale above
Bibliography
Sonia Chiodo, in Miklós Boskovits, ed., A Corpus of Florentine Painting: Painters in Florence after the ‘Black Death’, The Master of the Misericordia and Matteo di Pacino, Florence, 2011, sec. IV, vol. IX, pp. 480-481, reproduced pl. LXXIX.
In the wake of the Black Death in 1348, the former priorities of pre-Renaissance Italian art were re-evaluated as one third of the Italian population perished in two years. Surrounded by death and sometimes unable to even bury the dead, Europe underwent a wave of religious revivalism that, among other things, emphasized the need for repentance. Italian art, and especially that in Florence, consequently changed course as the rise of popular religious movements such as the Flagellants and the need for Divine compassion produced works of grace and intense devotional imagery with an increasing focus on mortality. Forgotten for a generation was the vivacious realism of Giotto and his followers. It is in this context that Matteo di Pacino paints our Christ as Man of Sorrows in Florence around 1370.
This beautiful and touching small panel was almost certainly created as part of a predella for a large polyptych. This is suggested by its horizontal format and the direction of the wood grain. Our panel perfectly matches in size, style and decoration of a St. James Major (formerly Italian art market, sold Finarte, Milan, 1967), also given to Matteo di Pacino and dated to the early 1370s. Formerly known as the Master of the Rinuccini Chapel, Luciano Bellosi identified the artist as Matteo di Pacino in 1973, based on comparisons with Pacino’s only signed and dated work, the Stroganoff Polyptych (1361; Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Rome). Other paintings by this master are in Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg, and the Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence.
This Christ the Man of Sorrows employs the traditional iconography of the wounded and emaciated Christ surrounded by the Instruments of the Passion. Instead of showing the painful suffering of the Savior, Pacino’s Christ seems calm, as if asleep – despite the blood dripping from his side-wound. In this way Pacino offers us a sober, powerful, and contemplative image in a similar vein to his more complex and later Crucified Christ of the New York Metropolitan’s altarpiece (1975.1.69); in both works, Christ’s bristly beard and red locks frame a downcast face with closed eyes. This graceful and comforting type of image is in keeping with the post-plague Florentine aesthetic whose most renowned exponents were Andrea and Nardo di Cione.❖