The Man of Sorrows

This is a rare surviving work by this leading painter in fourteenth-century Naples. It is an imago pietatis, an image of the dead Christ standing in the tomb and displaying his wounds. Gleaming against the dark blue background, and mourned by the Virgin and Saint John, Christ’s body was likely meant to evoke a range of responses, from horror to compassion or even desire.

Surrounding the tomb and the more static central group of figures are the arma Christi, symbols that refer to scenes from the Passion. These jewel-like, brightly colored, and detailed elements invited the beholder to contemplate various events in the narrative of Jesus’s last days. This image represents a complex merging of the Passion narrative with the static depiction of the dead Christ in the tomb, a well-known subject in Byzantine painting.