| The panel Christ as the Man of Sorrows by Naddo Ceccharelli shows the dead Christ as a half-length figure standing in the sarcophagus in a manner also typical of icon painting. This physical position is impossible for a corpse, and explains the divine nature of Jesus Christ, who died as a man: the inconceivable can only be a mystery that the believer accepts in faith. A lavishly embroidered cloth lines the sarcophagus, an allusion to the altar covering, the corporale. This equates the sarcophagus with the eucharistic altar at which the faithful receive the body of Christ in the form of the consecrated wafer. The picture expresses the general wish to make Jesus’ unimaginable presence in bread comprehensible by transforming it into a visible body. In his panel, Ceccharelli combines a finely worked gold ground with first attempts at three-dimensional presentation: he places the sarcophagus and the figure in parallel, one behind the other, on shallow spatial planes, although the effect does not yet really create an illusion of depth. The richly ornamented frame contains eight round medallions with portraits of saints that look like miniature icons. Ceccharelli placed his signature conspicuously on the front of the sarcophagus. This reflects the artist’s enhanced self-awareness, but also his hope of sharing in the salvation promised by the image. Ceccharelli’s panel is dated to c. 1347 because the only other work of art that can be attributed to him with any certainty – the Madonna and Child (formerly in the Cook Collection, Richmond, VA) – dates from then and is also signed by him. |
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Oil on panel
height 71 cm, width 50 cm
Signed at bottom: NADDUS CECCH(ARELLI) DESENIS MEPINX(IT)
Inv.-No. GE862
Provenance: 1892 by Prince Johann II von Liechtenstein, possibly in England
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