Gerolamo Mocetto, 'The Massacre of the Innocents', about 1500-25

The scene shows the violent biblical episode in which King Herod orders a massacre of all children under the age of two in an attempt to kill the newborn Christ, believing him to be a threat to his rule.

A soldier kneels, about to plunge his dagger into the infant lying on its back. Mocetto took this pose from one of his own engravings, The killing of the Sow (British Museum, London), which shows the figure naked and about to ritually sacrifice a pig; he holds it steady by the ear. Nearby a woman raises her arms in horror at the sight of her dead children, their bodies piled up before her. Her pose is copied from the figure of a woman mourning Christ in The Entombment, an engraving by Mantegna (Albertina, Vienna). Another woman tries to protect her child from the soldier in green who has already grabbed its arm; her head and turban are copied from another female mourner in The Entombment. The position of the two children at the woman’s feet is an exact copy of the two sleeping children in Mantegna’s engraving of Bacchanal with a Wine Vat (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). The references show Mocetto’s knowledge and admiration of Mantegna’s work, as well as the idea that the ‘massacre of the innocents’, as the slaughter is known, prefigured Christ’s own violent execution.

This panel was once joined with another painting in our collection, and formed the left-hand part of the composition. Both pictures feature a variety of architectural features inspired by classical buildings, a setting popularised by Mantegna. This one shows a lofty marble archway, indented with niches which dwarf the figures. The arcade that runs along the right edge of the picture is topped by a balustrade of slender round columns – this appears to continue in the other half of the composition, where it runs along to top of the image.