In yesterday's post we looked at a painting inspired by the Easter Triduum. Let's continue the thread by focusing on "The Man of Sorrows", a painting that reflects Sandro Botticelli's devotion to Christ.
Dating from around 1500, this is a haunting representation of Christ's sufferings. Botticelli didn't opt for a mere portrait, but he represented a vision, including in the painting imaginary elements.
The painting is confrontational as Jesus looks directly at us, standing in the centre of the picture, but not with perfect frontality and symmetry as his facial features - his eyes, nose and mouth - are all uneven. Jesus is portrayed as vulnerable: his eyes are full of pain and his arms and hands are bound with ropes that cut into his flesh, though his hands are crossed over his chest in a gesture of humility and piety. The signs of his suffering are everywhere about him: blood trickles down his forehead and his eyes are full of pain.
Though the dark red tunic, the crown of thorns and the ropes remind us of the moment after the trial of Jesus when he is mocked by Roman soldiers, the fingers of his left hand reveal the opening in his chest, made by a soldier's lance while his body was on the cross to make sure he had died, and there are the wounds of the nails on his hands. The time of the portrait is therefore imaginary as it doesn't follow the events from Jesus' passion chronologically.
Christ's halo is very elaborate: most painters represent haloes as circles of diaphanous light, here instead the halo is composed of balletic angels in white and grey, carrying the instruments of Jesus' passion - the column to which he was bound, the ladder, the whip, the lance, the nails, the sponge drenched in vinegar, the cross itself and the winding cloth in which the body was shrouded - arranged around his head.
There is an interesting note to make about Jesus' robe: on the collar of the tunic there is an incomplete description in Latin - [Chr]isto / IesuNazar / Enor [...] - representing the words drawn from the titulus placed above the cross (Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudeorum or INRI), which identified him as Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, words meant in mockery reclaimed by Christians as truth.
Tablets nailed to the cross above crucified criminals were there to announce their crimes, and the crime of Jesus was to have claimed to be king of the Jews. Here the words are inscribed in the robe, embroidered in the neckline, and, since they are in the ablative case, they mean "Through (or By) Christ Jesus the Nazarene King…" to indicate that reconciliation with God can happen through Jesus. Fashion-wise it is interesting to note how the inscription on the cross was turned into a message of salvation in a detail incorporated in the tunic.
The painting was in a private collection, unseen until its inclusion in the exhibition "Botticelli: Likeness, Myth, Devotion" at Frankfurt’s Städel Museum in 2009-2010. Sold at a sale at Sotheby's in New York in January 2022 (for 45,419,700 USD) it was requested for the forthcoming exhibition "Botticelli and Renaissance Florence: Masterworks from the Uffizi" that will be on at Minneapolis Museum of Art later on this year (15 October 2022 - 8 January 2023).
Comments