This dramatic depiction of the Deposition of Christ on slate is a late work by Jacopo Bassano, datable to circa 1585. In this phase of his career Bassano developed several variations of a nocturnal Deposition or Lamentation beginning with his signed altarpiece of 1574 for Santa Maria in Vanzo, Padua. The present example is more intimate and the slate support, known as pietra nera in Italian, enhances the emotional intensity of the scene by creating a pitch-black night, illuminated only by the torch held by Mary Magdalene at center.

The Passion story, particularly just after Christ’s death on the cross, lends itself to a nocturnal setting: according to Catholic tradition, although Christ died in the afternoon, the sun was completely obscured in that moment and the earth went dark. Jacopo’s best known night scene of the Lamentation is the large canvas now in the Louvre from just a few years before the Diamond picture (fig. 1). The smaller support here required a tighter composition and the smooth surface allows more emphasis on detailed facial expressions, treatment of fabrics and textures. Individual rays of light from the torch hit the muscles of Christ’s broken body and cast strong shadows in the folds of the Virgin’s mantle, as elements further from the center recede into darkness.

Jacopo also painted earlier moments from the Passion of Christ on slate, for example the Road to Calvary (circa 1575) today in Budapest, and the Calvary from the same year in Barcelona (figs. 2, 3). Torchlit night scenes of the Passion became popular among patrons in Venice, and Jacopo’s son Francesco would build a career around painting variations of works like the present by his father. It has previously been suggested that Francesco initiated the use of slate for this subject and set his scenes more specifically at night than had Jacopo, but this late work by the elder Bassano indicates that Jacopo was an innovator on this theme as well. The Bassano workshop produced many versions of Jacopo’s Passion scenes on slate for elite patrons: see for example the Christ Crowned with Thorns by Jacopo’s son Leandro formerly in the collection of King Phillip II.¹

Although Bassano never left his hometown of the same name, he produced some of the most original works of sixteenth-century Italy and avoided a formulaic style, even while operating a financially successful workshop. In the second half of his career he emphasized color over line as a mode of expression, and he was influenced by the late work of Titian. Bassano would in turn be influential for the young El Greco, who was in Venice 1567- 70. The late night scenes painted in the 1580s until his death in 1592 are dark encapsulations of human emotion and are painted with broken brushstrokes that artist biographer Carlo Ridolfi called “stabs of the brush.”²

1. Museo del Prado, Madrid, inv. P000041

https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-crowning-with-thorns/0c078c56-dfaa-4b03-b222-2a69f69af48a

2. For more biography, see K. Christiansen, “Jacopo dal Ponte, called Bassano (ca. 1510–1592),” in Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/bass/hd_bass.htm (March 2009)