Mourning the Dead Christ

The painting was in the Spagnol Collection when Marco Bona Castelletti made it known to the public in 1986, interpreting the work as the fruit of a collaboration between Filippo Abbiati and his pupil Alessandro Magnasco. This hypothesis was advanced again five years later on the occasion of an exhibition of 18th-century Lombard painting, and was supported by Giovanni Testori in an article in Corriere della Sera. The painting entered the Cariplo Collection in 1992 with this attribution, which subsequent studies have questioned. In 1995 Stefano Zuffi suggested the work was by Vimercati, while Andrea Spiriti in the volume on the early works in the Collection attributes it to Carlo Preda, in his Neo-Venetian period. In fact, this canvas has the elements of a particular style in vogue in Milan at the turn of the 17th century, when the influence of the leading exponent Abbiati spread to his pupils and followers, including Magnasco, Preda and Vimercati himself. His essentially Lombard style incorporates features drawn from various sources including the Venetian, Roman and Genoese schools. His workshop was a meeting place for artists from different backgrounds from the Genoese Magnasco to the Venetian Sebastiano Ricci. This explains why there is some difficulty in establishing the authorship of the painting with absolute certainty. However, of all the suggestions put forward the most likely is Zuffi’s. Convincing evidence useful for the purposes of proving that Mourning the Dead Christ is by Vimercati is to be found in the two versions of Saint Anne Offering Mary to the Eternal Father (Rho, sanctuary of Our Lady of Sorrows and Milan, church of Sant’ Eustorgio), which share the same dramatic chiaroscuro contrasts, reminiscent of those found in Giovan Battista Piazzetta’s Venetian works. There are also some very similar details, such as the head of the servant holding the amphora that can be compared with that of the figure (St John?) behind Christ. Moreover, in the Visitation in the Museo Diocesano in Lodi the faces of the Virgin and Saint Elisabeth are angular, while their heads are covered with heavy veils, just like the Virgin in this painting. The little angel on the extreme right, which is very Emilian in style, could be the result of those eclectic influences, in which that of the Procaccinis is particularly evident. From the iconographic standpoint the presence of the archangel Michael is unusual here, he is depicted in the guise of a warrior bearing a shield with the inscription Quis ut Deus.