How the $ 30 Million Renaissance Masterpiece Was Found: Mantegna's Resurrection of Christ

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The painting, which spent 200 years in the storerooms of an Italian museum, was attributed to one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance in 2018. The authorship of Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506) was supported by the world's leading expert on this artist Keith Christiansen of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The discovery means that a painting depicting the resurrection of Jesus could be worth about a thousand times more than previously thought.

The Carrara Academy in Bergamo has discovered a "new" painting by Andrea Mantegna. For almost 200 years it was considered a copy of the original painting, but recent research has shown that it is in fact the original work of Andrea Mantegna. Now the work is attributed to the famous master of the Renaissance.

How did the discovery happen?

"This is a wonderful surprise," said Dr. Christiansen, "Absolutely high quality work by one of the outstanding artists of the early Renaissance."

The painting, titled "The Resurrection of Christ," belongs to the Carrara Academy in Bergamo, a city 30 miles north of Milan. In March, its curator, Giovanni Valagussa, prepared a catalog of works dating back to 1500. It was at this moment that a landmark discovery took place: the researcher was struck by the magnificence of the dark picture on the panel. And he began to study it. The work has long been removed from the permanent exhibition of the museum and was kept in storerooms. According to Dr. Valagoussa, in the 1930s, renowned art historian Bernard Berenson dismissed it as a modern copy of Mantegna's lost painting, but insured the painting for 30,000 euros.

Valaguss' curiosity was aroused by the horizontal wooden stand on the back of the painting. The banner was attached to a pillar that had been cut, indicating that the painting had been split into pieces - a common practice during the Renaissance. Valagussa's thoughts immediately turned to Mantegna's painting The Descent of Christ into Nothingness, in which Christ is shown holding a pole without a banner. “We put two images together, and bingo! All the stones match, the banner joins, the mystery is revealed,”Christiansen said.

According to Christiansen, Renaissance artists often cut paintings "for practical reasons to fit the decorative patterns of the collection." In this case, he added, "Mantegna's name was so prestigious that instead of throwing out the top, it was saved." The lower half of the split painting, owned by a private collector, was bought at Sotheby's in New York in 2003 for $ 28.5 million.

Cross

The iconic canvas is the image "The Resurrection of Christ". And the second picture, which is a continuation of the first work, is "The Descent of Christ into Purgatory" (c. 1492). As Dr. Valagussa studied the painting further, he noticed what was supposed to be an important clue: a small golden cross at the bottom of the painting that was seemingly separated from everything else.

One possible explanation for the random cross is that the panel was cut to separate the cross at the bottom from the pillar that continued into the rest of the hypothetical (second) painting. Dr. Valagussa began his search for other works by Mantegna on the events after Jesus' death on the cross. This cross, along with the stones depicted, is a natural continuation of another painting that completes the original work, The Descent of Christ into Purgatory, which was auctioned at Sotheby in 2003 for more than $ 25 million.

Meanwhile, he asked the staff of the Carrara Academy to carry out an infrared survey of the panel to see what was below the surface. They found that the artist painstakingly painted fully clothed soldiers instead of nude images in the same poses. “Mantegna has always done this,” said Dr. Valagussa. But this technique was also used by other artists of his time.

Descent plot

The attribution has been confirmed by his research. The story of the descent of Christ in Limbo does not appear in the Bible, but in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus / Christian belief in the resurrection is associated with the idea of limb. Limb is a place for those who are tainted by original sin and therefore cannot go to heaven, but who in other deeds deserve and should not be sent to hell. Thus, on the left in Mantegna's painting, we see the first human couple, Adam and Eve, two who, through Original Sin, begin the story of the Passion of Christ. The composition seems tight, mainly because the top and left edges are cut off. Christ leans towards one of the patriarchs emerging from the depths of hell, whose cloak, caught by the wind, surrounds him like a halo. He turns his face and hands to Christ. The emotional tension of the scene ends with a dialogue between these two figures.

Some medieval theologians believed that it was in the limbo that Jesus passed during the three days between his death and resurrection in order to free the virtuous souls who died before him, but did not have the opportunity to be redeemed by his sacrifice.