Raphael
oil on wood cm. 1,84x1,76
Raphael's
Deposition was painted for Atalanta Baglioni in memory of her
son Grifonetto, who was killed in the fighting for the dominance of
Perugia, and housed in the church of S.Francesco in Perugia in 1507.
It remained there for 101 years, until it was removed at night with
the complicity of the priest and sent to Pope Paul V, who gave it to
his nephew for his collection and it thus became the property of the
Borghese family. After the Treaty of Tolentino the painting was sent
to Paris in 1797. When it came back to Rome in 1816, only the central
scene was returned to the Borghese collection, while the three theological
virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity, remained in the Vatican Museums (the
ornamentation surmounting it by Tiberio Alfani is in the Galleria Nazionale
of Umbria).
This
large altarpiece presents the scene like a Roman relief and is inspired
by the reliefs on ancient Roman sarcophagi depicting the transportation
of Meleager. It is interesting to note that in his preliminary sketch
the artist has drawn Christ lying in the ground, as in the painting
by Perugino, but when he executed the painting he decided on the antique
form of transportation, as seen in a relief he probably studied on the
Montalvo sarcophagus in Florence (now in the Torno Collection, Milan).
But the influence of Michelangelo can also be seen in the composition
of Christ (cf. the Pietà, St.Peter's) and the figure seen in the profile
supporting the Madonna repeats a similar pose in the Doni Tondo (in
the Uffizi, completed a year before The Deposition).
