Description

The essentiality of this canvas, its cut, and its composition do not easily allow one to guess the author’s name. We can assume that it is a Neapolitan painter belonging to the first half of the XVII century. We can deduce this purely from a stylistic observation: the body of Christ is all that emerges from the dark background and is as livid as a statue, luminous but not alive, relatively rigid, and built up by greyish-yellow tones. The contrasting black background has only one “note” of colour, the reddish light rising from the hill at the feet of the dying Christ, who turns his weary gaze to the sky. This unknown painter may have had the experience of the work of Jusepe de Ribera in exposing the naked body to a strong source of light that makes it emerge from profound darkness. However, in the choice of palette, it is possible to refer to the work of an important interpreter of the Neapolitan Caravaggist movement, Battistello Caracciolo, who may have inspired the painter.