Friday 21 October 2016

Found origin for a "despairing Christ" from an earlier post

In June, I posted about an interesting auction in Sweden of the Lucinis Collection, with many old paintings for a reasonable price. There was one work in particular I commented on, "a work of considerable quality and originality, perhaps based on an unknown work by Mostaert or someone from the Francken family." It was estimated at 1,100 Euro and sold for 2,800 Euro.

Looking back at it now, I still thnk this was cheap for this unusual work. However, while researching another Ecce Homo, I cam across a painting I must have known but didn't link with the Lucinis work.


It's an Ecce Homo or "Christ as the Man of Sorrows" by Albrecht Dürer from 1483, now in the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe. The composition, while not identical, is way too close to be an accidental likeness.

3 comments:

  1. I am unsure. The Schmerzensmann by Dürer in Karlsruhe is a very detailed portrait. The one from the Lucini Collection is - only the Jesus figur - 20 cm, the head is maybe 4 cm. The Dürer is nearly 90 cm. The one from the Lucini collection is for my opinion in the gethsemane garden the night before the crucifixion, the Dürer shows Jesus after the crucifixion.

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  2. Oh, I didn't mean that the whole concept was based on the Dürer, only that the figure of Christ was based on it. The image of a Christ who has a bad moment, with one hand supporting his head and the other laying limp (palm upturned), with one knee pulled up, the head somewhat tilted, the same expression... The Lucinis one didn't copy the Dürer Christ, but it seems to me that he used it as his main inspiration for the central figure, even though he turned it into a Christ on the Cold Stone.

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