The centre of the composition is occupied by the lifeless, waxy body of Jesus, held on the lap of the Virgin in mourning and by a devout woman.

The work in question is stylistically attributable to Neri di Bicci, a prolific Florentine artist active in Tuscany between the late 1430s and the 1480s. Neri was born into a family of artists and, upon the death of his father Bicci di Lorenzo, he inherited the family workshop founded at the end of the 14th century by his grandfather Lorenzo di Bicci. His flourishing art business, which incorporated various branches of painting and sculpture, is extensively documented in Ricordanze, a workshop book drawn up between 1453 and 1475 (Neri di Bicci, ed. Santi 1976). 

Formerly owned by the writer Anatole France (1844-1924), this panel entered the Cerruti Collection after being sold at auction on 2 December 1981 at the Hôtel Drouot-Richelieu in Paris. It has a simple cassetta frame of modern production. The panel is slightly warped and has been thinned and trimmed along the top and bottom edges. The uniformity of the paint surface is spoilt by the presence of metal nails, scratches, abrasions, small stains, loss of colour and extensive craquelure, primarily apparent in the central portion of the painting, which affects the faces of the figures and the gold leaf of the haloes created using a compass. The subject of the painting is the “Lamentation over the Dead Christ”. The scene unfolds within a bare, deserted valley, defined in the background by a series of softly arched rocky hills. In keeping with the story told in the Gospels, we can see that sunset is imminent. The centre of the composition is occupied by the lifeless, waxy body of Jesus, held on the lap of the Virgin in mourning and by a devout woman (fig. 1). Before placing him in the tomb, those present lament his death. Next to the grieving figures of St John the Evangelist and Mary Magdalene, we see Nicodemus, portrayed with his head bare as he grips the nails and the pincers. On the opposite side, Joseph of Arimathea, shown in profile, impassively displays the crown of thorns. Opposite him is a sketchy kneeling figure with an uncertain perspective. This is almost certainly the donor of the work, shown holding Christ’s head in his hands. 

The small size, rectangular format and horizontal veins of wood suggest that the panel was probably conceived as part of a predella. 

Given the nature of the subject matter, it is not currently possible to associate it with any of the altarpieces painted by Neri di Bicci with any degree of certainty. Upon reading the Ricordanze, which do not mention our work, it becomes apparent that the formula adopted most frequently by Neri in the execution of similar artefacts involved placing a “Pietà” in the centre, flanked by four or more kneeling or half-bust saints. This solution became almost a constant from the end of the 1460s. The production of predellas with narrative scenes is instead rather limited, although in some cases he produces some particularly fine results, especially in his earlier works. 

The “Lamentation” theme rarely appears in the master’s vast corpus of work. We only find it in two large altarpieces, one with “Xpo fuori del munimento” painted in 1472-73 for the church of the Carmine al Morrocco (Tavarnelle Va di Pesa, Museo di Arte Sacra),¹ and a stylistically later piece, now in the church of San Salvatore al Monte alle Croci in Florence. Out of these two panels, the Morrocco altarpiece has the greatest number of parallels with our work. Christ’s arched body is likewise extended over the Virgin’s lap, while two figures support his head and feet. The arms of the deceased are arranged over his abdomen in the same way and his white loincloth, knotted tightly on one side, wraps his thin legs. The same composition, albeit more detailed and complex, was also adopted by a follower of the master in a panel, recorded in the Casa Martelli in Florence and in 1966 in the Bottino Collection in Rome, known to us thanks to a photograph conserved in the Zeri Foundation archive in Bologna. An unusual element that distinguishes the panel in the Cerruti Collection is the thick asymmetrical black border, visible on the external sides, which frames the scene geometrically. An identical one appears in at least two works. The predella section with the Martyrdom of St Apollonia (Claremont, Pomona College Museum of Art, inv. no. 61.1.6),² formerly in the Contini Bonacossi Collection in Florence, is almost the same size as ours (21.3 x 52.4 cm), but it is clearly an earlier work, datable to around the late 1450s. The painting with St Leonard Saving the Queen from the Pains of Childbirth, formerly in the Serristori Collection, dubiously attributed to Neri di Bicci solely on the basis of an old photo (Settignano, Villa I Tatti, Berenson Foundation, photo archive), is also dissimilar in stylistic terms.³ The only thing the three works have in common is therefore the unusual rhomboidal border, missing from other works by the master. With the exception of the predella at the bottom of the Canneto Altarpiece (San Miniato, Museo Diocesano d’Arte Sacra) of 1452,⁴ in which the scenes are bordered by an oval black painted border, Neri divided his pictures using the more classical and traditional golden balusters.⁵ Based on what we know today, it is therefore legitimate to put forward the theory that the painted rhomboidal framework, analysed here, may be the result of later manipulation and that perhaps all three paintings passed through the same collection or sales house. 

Although the absence of definite references makes it difficult to date the work with any certainty, it is possible to place it stylistically to between the second half of the 1460s and the middle of the following decade. As a whole, the image is orchestrated in keeping with an arrangement that took hold towards the end of the century. However, the body of Christ is no longer as decisively and clearly broken as in the artist’s later works, in the same manner as the German Vesperbild, but is defined by a serpentine line that seems to extend along the body of Mary Magdalene bowed to the ground. An early date is supported by a number of elements, including the total absence of golden edges, the soft, curved arms of the bearded figures, the manner in which Nicodemus raises his little finger, gripping the pincers hard, a certain lack of expression typical of the main figures with their large arched lips and the darting, soft folds of the heavy clothing rich in iridescent colours.⁶ 

Giada Petrillo 

¹ Neri di Bicci 1976, pp. 408-409 no. 761, 411-412 no. 767.

² Shapley 1966, p. 113.

³ Berenson 1932, p. 386.

⁴ Bertolini 1954, p. 147.

⁵ Even the panel with the Nativity in the Berenson Collection in Villa I Tatti (Settignano) is included within a similar curvilinear border. From a stylistic viewpoint however, the work is attributable to a follower of Neri di Bicci. Although the model shows influence of the maestro’s compositions, as revealed in the example in the Lindenau-Museum at Altenburg (J. Tripps, in Florence 2005, pp. 152-154), and it has often been repeated by his pupils (eg. Harvard, Fogg Art Museum), some stylistic choices do not belong to Neri’s vocabulary. For example, the geometric pose of the angel, the vitality of the little people who populate the landscape - one of whom is engaged on skilfully making his horse rear up - the gentle aspect of the two shepherds or the cruder and more caricatural one of the Child, portrayed as a rigid doll, are foreign to his lexicon.

⁶ In the Ricordanze dated 9 January 1464 (1463 AD), Neri describes the predella of the altarpiece with the Annuciation in great detail (Florence, Galleria dell’Accademia; Neri di Bicci 1976, pp. 218-219, no. 431), realised by Agnolo di Neri Vettori, in which “1o Disposto di croce e da’ lati 4 meze fighure” are painted. While the measurements and the subject matter might match for identifying our panel with the above-mentioned work, given also the presence of the donor in the story, a certain stylistic poverty and a series of pictorial discrepancies compared to the high quality of the altarpiece lead us to exclude such a possibility for now.