Christ Carrying the Cross

This panel is kept in the Borghese storerooms, and on its back an inscription says, in Latin, that Andrea de Solario painted it in 1511. Solari usually signed himself Andreas faciebat, so several scholars doubt the words are his. One view accepts the date and places the picture between about 1510 and 1514, soon after he came back from France. Another sees it as one of his last works, close to the apostles of the Assumption he left unfinished at the Certosa of Pavia. A few early critics even took it for a Flemish copy. Christ, crowned with thorns and with a rope knotted at his neck, turns his face toward us. Simon of Cyrene helps take the weight of the cross, and the insolent executioner in the red cap has features the museum links to northern painting.