Two absolute masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance

The Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Giovanni Bellini

Vatican [ENA] On April 5, 2025, a precious exhibition of two absolute masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance placed in ideal dialogue with each other was inaugurated at the Apostolic Palace of Castel Gandolfo (Rome): the Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Giovanni Bellini, from the Vatican Pinacoteca, and the Dead Christ Supported by Angels by Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, known as Sodoma, on loan from the Venerable Archconfraternity

of Santa Maria dell’Orto in Rome. The initiative, promoted by the Vatican Museums and curated by the Department for Art of the 15th-16th Centuries, is part of the liturgical period of Lent and Easter, offering visitors a particularly intense aesthetic and spiritual experience. The two works are both dedicated to meditation on the lifeless body of Christ and represent not only two pictorial peaks of their time, but also two theological reflections on the Passion of Jesus. The Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Giovanni Bellini, known as Giambellino (Venice 1430-1516), the surviving cymatium of the ancient altarpiece of San Francesco in Pesaro (around 1475), was stolen by the French Army after the Treaty of Tolentino (1797) and returned to

Italy thanks to the intermediation of Antonio Canova. Housed in the Vatican Pinacoteca since 1820, the work has recently benefited from a careful restoration carried out in the Vatican laboratories, which has restored its chromatic refinement and compositional balance, based on transparencies, chiaroscuro and precious pigments such as lacquer and lapis lazuli. The painting moves us with the poignant gesture of Mary Magdalene who, in the silence of the tomb, anoints Christ's wounds with an intertwining of hands that seems like a whisper of eternity.

Dead Christ Supported by Angels by Sodoma

Accompanying Bellini in this exhibition is the Dead Christ Supported by Angels, painted by Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, known as Sodoma (Vercelli, 1477 – Siena, 15 February 1549) around 1505, in his early artistic maturity, after his Milanese period and his permanent arrival in Rome and then Siena. A work owned by the Roman Archconfraternity and also restored in the past in the laboratories of the Vatican Museums (1933–1934), it represents a painful but luminous meditation on the body of Christ, supported with devotion by four angels, in a composition of great elegance and emotional intensity.

The iconographic reference to the bronze statuette by Galeazzo Mondella, known as the Modern, sculpted in Milan around 1500, highlights its connection with the figurative culture of the Po Valley and Leonardo.