Descent into the limbo

Mantegna made this small panel around 1470, when he was court painter to the Gonzaga family who ruled Mantua. The subject is the moment after the Crucifixion when, by tradition, Christ went down into the underworld to free the souls waiting there, from Adam and Eve onward. Mantegna does something unusual with it. He turns Christ away from us, so we see the figure from behind, stepping down into a dark cave mouth in the rock while pale souls press forward out of the shadows. It is painted in tempera and gold on a panel not much larger than a book. Long in private hands, it sold at auction in 2003 for more than 28 million dollars, one of the highest prices ever paid for an old master at the time.