The Lamentation over the Dead Christ

This carved limewood group represents the Lamentation over the Dead Christ, and was probably made in Germany or France in the second half of the nineteenth century. The relief and base are made separately but from the same block of wood. This fact, as well as the stylistic inconsistency, are reasons to doubt the previously proposed date of the figures, the first third of the 16th century. The group was almost certainly in fact produced in about 1850-1880 by a carver who worked for the collector Frédéric Spitzer; it may have been made as a pendant to a Circumcision, probably of Antwerp origin of about 1520.