The Lamentation over the Dead Christ

“Bellini and Sodoma – The Passion of Christ” is the theme of the exhibition inaugurated on April 5, 2025 in the Apostolic Palace of Castel Gandolfo. It is the Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Giovanni Bellini, from the Vatican Pinacoteca, and the Dead Christ Supported by Angels by Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, known as Sodoma, on loan from the Venerable Archconfraternity of Santa Maria dell’Orto in Rome.

The initiative, promoted by the Vatican Museums and the Pontifical Villas, was curated by the museums’ Department of 15th and 16th Century Art and was organized to coincide with the liturgical seasons of Lent and Easter. The theme that links the two works is the Passion of Christ, in particular, the meditation on his lifeless body after dying on the Cross.

The work created by Bellini around 1475, which originally formed the cymatium for the altarpiece of the main altar of the church of San Francesco in Pesaro, is considered one of the great masterpieces of Italian Renaissance painting.

The scene represents the moment in which the body of Christ, before burial, is mourned and anointed with perfumed oils. Four characters are represented: Christ, Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus and Mary Magdalene, who supports one of Jesus' hands. The painting’s perspective is strongly foreshortened from the bottom to the top, which takes into account the height at which the panel must have been located. The central point of the representation is the intertwining of hands between Jesus and the Magdalene. Placed in the Vatican Pinacoteca since 1820, the work was recently subjected to restoration carried out in the laboratories of the Vatican Museums.

The Dead Christ Supported by Angels, painted by Sodoma around 1505, represents a reflection on the suffering and now lifeless body of Christ.