Ercole de' Roberti, 'The Dead Christ', about 1490

This is the left-hand panel of a diptych, a painting made up of two panels, joined with a hinge so that it could be opened and closed like a book. The right hand panel shows The Adoration of the Shepherds. It was made for the Duchess of Ferrara, Eleonora of Aragon.

Christ is shown after his death, propped up on the edge of his marble tomb by two angels. He is naked apart from a loin cloth and a crown of thorns on his head. The wounds from the nails of the Crucifixion are visible on his lifeless hands. The yellow-white skin of his corpse contrasts with the tanned skin of the kneeling Saint Jerome, whose athletic body is covered only partially by a red cloak. As he contemplates Christ’s body, Jerome clutches a stone in his right hand, ready to beat his chest, inspired here by Christ’s suffering. He is accompanied by a small lion, the animal whom, according to legend, he tamed when living in the wilderness. His pose, with right hand raised up, may be based upon Ercole’s fellow Ferrarese artist Cosimo Tura’s Saint Jerome.

At the top left, painted in faint, minute brushstrokes is Calvary, the site where Jesus was crucified; his drooping dead body is being removed from the central cross for burial in his tomb. As in the painting’s pair, The Adoration of the Shepherds, the miniature scene in the landscape shows the event that preceded the main image. Saint Francis kneels on the middle plateau, raising the palms of his hands towards the heavens. Saint Francis is said to have meditated upon the Crucifixion with such piety that he too was afflicted with the wounds of the Cross, known as the stigmata. Golden rays painted with gold leaf emanate from the hands and feet of the crucified Christ, directly striking the saint’s palms and transferring the wounds of the Cross to him.

The emphasis on Christ’s dead body mirrors the left-hand panel, where the naked body of the infant Christ is the focus of adoration. Images of Christ standing or seated in his open tomb were very popular in Italy in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, and were known as the ‘Imago Pietatis’ (‘image of pity’) or the Man of Sorrows. They were based upon an image from Byzantium, the Eastern Christian empire. Ercole’s version, where Christ is supported by two angels, is similar to those by Giovanni Bellini working in nearby Venice. Meditation upon Christ’s suffering and death were supposed to help worshippers develop an emotional and personal connection with him. Usually, images of the dead Christ did not include landscape backgrounds, but here the hillside is a continuation from the left-hand diptych panel, and the presence of Saint Jerome and Saint Francis offer examples of saints whose prayer focused upon Christ’s suffering.

The original owner of the diptych was the Duchess of Ferrara, Eleonora of Aragon, whom we know directed her prayer in particular towards the Corpus Christi (‘the body of Christ’) celebrated in the Christian tradition at Mass through the Eucharist. When Eleonora held this diptych in her hand and contemplated Christ’s birth and death, his body as a child and as an adult, her thumb may have pressed upon the inscription of his name carved into the triangular pediment of the lid of his elegant marble tomb.