(Bassano 1510–1592; Bassano 1557–1622 Venice)
The Deposition,
oil on canvas, 107 x 82 cm, framed

Provenance:
Franco Arese Visconti di Marcignago collection, Robecco d’Oglio, Cremona;
Don Giuseppe Camozzi, Robecco d’Oglio, Cremona, 1974;
Private European collection

We are grateful to Giuliana Ericani for suggesting an attribution to Jacopo and Leandro Bassano for the present painting (written communication 2019).

The composition of this painting relates to Christ’s body carried to the tomb by Jacopo Bassano, executed for the church of Santa Maria in Vanzo, Padua, which is signed and dated 1574. Beside the painting, another variant exists in horizontal format: one bigger work is in the Louvre, Paris (154 x 225 cm) and another smaller one is in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon (60 x 76 cm). Both are by Jacopo Bassano and can be dated to the early 1580s.

A stylistic analysis of the works created by Jacopo between the late 1570s and the early 1580s reveals the very high standard of Jacopo’s painting technique. His nocturnal settings are well rendered through light and colour: on one side by achieving an unusual degree of transparency and a diaphanous fragmentation of light. By direct comparison with this manner of working, the handling of the paint in the present work can be ascribed to Leandro’s early production, similar to his Deposition of Christ in the Museo di Bassano (inv. no. 32; see G. Ericani, I Bassano del Museo di Bassano, Milan 2016, pp. 102-103) and the Allegory of Water in a Genoese private collection (see A. Ballarin, Jacopo, Francesco e Leandro Bassano a Palazzo Lomellino. Un ciclo inedito di collezione privata genovese e altre opere provenienti da Vaduz e Vienna, Genoa 2012) both of which date to the mid-1580s.

According to Ericani the handling of the head of Christ in the present composition can be compared to the prototype by Jacopo in Padua which differs greatly from the canonical rendering of Leandro. In this area the paint is deployed in filaments of light and colour created with persistent brush strokes, typical of Jacopo’s works, revealing the presence of his hand, according to Ericani, in the depiction of the head of the principal figure of the present composition.