Christ the Redeemer
- Object belonging
- One's own
- Category
- Terracotta sculpture
- City
- Rome
- Location
- Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia
- Specific location
- Room 19
- Inventory
- PV 00957
- Material and technique
- Terracotta/paint
- Author
- Bartolomeo Sinibaldi called Baccio da Montelupo (1469-1535)
- Dating
- c. 1494-1495
- Dimensions
- 27 cm
- Origin
- Carlo Angeli (1919)
- Image copyright
- SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma
Short description
This polychromatic terracotta bust depicting Christ the Redeemer became part of the Palazzo Venezia colletion in 1919, a gift from the Florentine Carlo Angeli and attributed, at that time, to Matteo Civitali (1436-1501). It was Santangelo (1954), though, who suggested it shared similarities with the work of Baccio da Montelupo, and a particular affinity with the body of Christ in Christ in the Sepulchre in Segromigno in Monte and with the wooden St. Sebastian in the abbey of San Godenzo in Dicomano. Because of its similarity to the latter, which was made in 1506, it was suggested this work be dated to after 1506. The name of Baccio was put forward again recently by Turner who, in his doctoral thesis (1997), placed the work amongst those that might be attributed to Baccio, though he suggested a date of the early 1490s instead. The first documented sculpture ascribed with certainty to Baccio is the Lamentation over the Dead Christ, in terracotta, for the chapel of the Sepulchre of Christ in San Domenico in Bologna. Of the original group, now at the Museo della Basilica, only the head of St. Joseph of Arimathea, the figure of the Virgin, St. Mary Magdalene and another pious woman, perhaps St. Mary, are preserved. In Turner’s view, these works most closely approximate to the style of the present bust. In particular Christ has the same arched eyebrows and prominent nose of St. Joseph of Arimathea, while the smooth and straight arrangement of the hair is similar to that of the three female figures of the Lamentation.
Cristiano Giometti
