Circle of Bartolomé Ordóñez and Diego de Silóe c.1485 - 1520 and c.1490 - 1563 (respectively) Lamentation Naples, circa 1520 Alabaster 33 x 23 cm. This alabaster relief represents the Compianto or Lamentation, the scene that immediately followed the withdrawal of Christ’s body from the cross. It depicts the lifeless, but anatomically accurate body of Christ, surrounded by a group of mourning holy women. The central figure collapsing in grief and being supported by two shrouded women can be identified as the Madonna, her right-hand falling with pathos upon the leg of her dead son. It is perhaps Mary of Clopas or Mary of Joseph who holds the Saviour under his arms, propping him into a collapsed, but upright seated position, whilst looking heavenwards. Christ’s feet are embraced and wrapped by Mary Magdalene, the forgiven sinner who had washed his feet and dried them with her hair during the supper at Simon’s house. While behind are fragments of two figures, likely Joseph of Arimathea holding the crown of thorns to the left and John the Apostle or Nicodemus to the right. It is a beautifully contained scene, held together with a system of internal gazes, constructed by all the figures gazing inwards at each other, but for the Mary who supports Christ under the arms. The series of internal gazes heightens the intensity of this already emotionally charged scene and focusses the viewers eyes upon the bereft Madonna in the centre, her facial features depicted in foreshortened perspective as it is thrown back in despair. The body of the dead Christ is placed off-centre which gives a sense that the body is in the process of being physically moved, which adds a dynamism to the events, while the two Mary’s holding Christ frame the space in front of the body that is occupied by the viewer. This hems in the viewer and further draws them in, creating an emotional and almost claustrophobic intimacy with the mourners that is deeply affecting. This object was most likely originally part of an altarpiece that is very similar to another marble Lamentation relief in the Chapel of Gian Nicola de’ Vicariis at Salerno Cathedral (Fig. 1). The Compianto at Salerno forms part of a decorative cycle that frames the Adoration of the Magi by Andrea Sabatini, which included reliefs of the Oration in the Garden, the Flagellation, the Way to Calvary, the Crucifixion and the Deposition of Christ into the Sepulchre. Abbate believed these works to be directly related to the practice of Bartolomé Ordóñez (c.1485 - 1520) and Diego de Silóe (c.1490 - 1563),1 who, with their famed altar of the Caracciolo Chapel in the church of San Giovanni a Carbonara, Naples (Fig. 2), had a great impact on the style of sculpture in the region in the early decades of the 16th century.

1 Abbate 1986 pp. 39–40; Abbate also believed that the Salerno reliefs were part of a group that included a Deposition of Christ into the Sepulchre, mounted in the Teodori chapel in Naples Cathedral.

There is not only a similarity between the composition of the Salerno Lamentation and the present relief, but the representation of both their respective Madonnas are strikingly akin, with her foreshortened head thrown back in despair, whilst being supported by two shrouded female mourners, one holding her arm and the other her chest. There are also considerable comparisons to be made between both depictions of Christ, particularly the way his head hangs down, with his hair falling forward over his eyes and how his collapsed body is bent double, while his arms fall limply by his side in both renditions. Even the rendering and modelling of the fabric is incredibly similar, stylistic comparisons which strongly suggests that the present relief is also connected to artistic milieu of these two Spaniards, and particularly Ordóñez. Towards the end of the 15th century, the Spanish town of Burgos, in the Kingdom of Castile, experienced one of the richest periods of artistic activity in its history. The late Gothic Master sculptor Gil de Silóe (1486 – 1501) had achieved considerable acclaim for his altarpieces at the Cathedral and the Carthusian church of Miraflores in Burgos between (1496-1499), along with the tombs of John of Castile, his wife Isabella of Portugal (1486-1493) and their son Don Alfonso. Gil worked with his son Diego (c.1490 - 1563) on these tombs, but it was Diego and his master (or perhaps older friend) Bartolomé Ordóñez (c.1485 - 1520), who ushered in the new age of Spanish Renaissance sculpture during the first decades of the following century. These two sculptors, along with Diego’s contemporary, Alonso Berruguete (c.1488 - 1561) from Paredes de Nava, created a new sculptural language born out of the artistic developments in Florence, particularly the late work of Donatello and the early masterpieces of Michelangelo. They encountered these works first hand after an extended period of study in Italy,2 returning to conceive their own idiosyncratic interpretation of the Italian Renaissance style of sculpture. Ordóñez and Silóe worked as an artistic partnership for much of Ordóñez short life. By 1516, they had travelled to Naples, then under Spanish control, to carve the great marble Altar of the Epiphany in the Caracciolo Chapel in the church of San Giovanni a Carbonara, which is considered among the greatest sculptural works of this period. The altarpiece consists of a series of relief and freestanding sculptures, which they carved from the quintessentially Italian Renaissance medium of white marble from Carrara.3 In the modelling of the figures they also clearly embraced the mannered, but anatomically accurate, classical forms of divine, proportioned beauty, which emphasised emotional expression and humanity, that they had seen in the work of Donatello (c. 1386 - 1466), Michelangelo (1475 – 1564), Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519), Pontormo (1494 – 1557) and Andrea del Sarto (1486 - 1530). If one looks at another Lamentation, currently in a private collection and this time executed in walnut wood by Ordóñez4 (Fig. 3), it displays a distinctly similar mannerist attitude, compression of space and deployment of elongated and contorted figures who are organised in similar two-dimensional manner, as on both the present relief and Compianto from Salerno. The body of the dead Christ adopts the same pictorial concept, again held under his arms and propped up into an

2 Ordóñez may have trained there with Domenico Fancelli. 3 In 1517, Ordóñez is recorded as buying marble from Carrara for his work his Entombment group for the Hospital de la Santa Cruz, Barcelona and it was likely at this time that he also bought the marble for the altarpiece he carved with Diego de Siloe for the Carraciolo Chapel, Naples. 4 As discussed by the leading scholar of this period Riccardo Naldi in ‘Magnificence of Marble & Wood: Batolomé Ordóñez and Diego de Silóe’, 2019, Ch VI, pp. 204 - 259

upright seated position, but with his heavy, lifeless torso collapsed and head and arms hanging in a similar manner (Fig. 4). In addition to this, the Madonna’s shrouded head is thrown back creating the same foreshortened effect (Fig.5). The clear visual similarities between the marble relief at hand and these two reliefs attributed to Ordóñez and his circle, make a strong case for its creation in Naples, by an artist working immediately within the circle – if not the workshop - of Ordóñez and Silóe. One of the major techniques demonstrated in the wooden relief attributed to Ordóñez, as well in his and Siloe’s Altar of the Epiphany in Naples (Fig. 6), is a method of relief carving no doubt learned in Florence and perfected by Donatello (Fig. 7). Known as relievo schiacciato, it is the construction of a pictorial relief from diminishing planes from high relief in the foreground, to very low relief in the background. In the present relief there are passages which are strongly reminiscent of such a technique, particularly in the subtle rendering of the fabrics – the unravelled perizonium or the linen brought by Joseph to prepare Christs body and for the garments of the women. The use of relievo schiacciato in this manner, in conjunction with a similar handling of forms and compression of space that occurs in the Lamentation in wood and the Altar of the Epiphany, further suggests that the present relief was carved by a sculptor working in the circle of these two Spaniards, amid the artistic and cultural milieu of Spanish controlled Naples, during the second decade of the 16th century.

Fig. 1

Sculptor active in Naples, Lamentation on the Dead Christ, c. 1520- 30 (detail) Chapel of Gian Nicola de’ Vicariis Salerno Cathedral

Fig. 2

Bartolomé Ordóñez and Diego de Siloe, Altarpiece Adoration of the Magi, 1516 Caracciolo di Vico chapel, San Giovanni a Carbonara, Naples

Fig. 3

Bartolomé Ordóñez, Lamentation on the Dead Christ Walnut, Private collection

Fig. 4

Bartolomé Ordóñez, Lamentation on the Dead Christ (detail) Walnut, Private collection

Fig. 5

Bartolomé Ordóñez, Lamentation on the Dead Christ (detail) Walnut, Private collection

Fig. 6

Bartolomé Ordóñez and Diego de Siloe, Scenes of Sacrifice, 1516 (detail) altarpiece Adoration of the Magi, Caracciolo di Vico chapel, San Giovanni a Carbonara, Naples

Fig.7

Donatello, Deposition of Christ (detail) Museo Storico, Artistico del, Tesoro di San Pietro, chapel of Beneficiaries, Vatican City