Lamentation of Christ

The back of this small copper plate records where it has been. It carries the seal of the Colonna, one of the great noble families of Rome, and the picture appears in a 1783 inventory of a Colonna palace outside the city. In 1605 and 1606 Rubens was working in Rome, and his elder brother Philip was secretary and librarian to Cardinal Ascanio Colonna, so the Cummer Museum thinks the cardinal very likely commissioned it. The plate is only about 28 centimetres tall, a picture for a private room rather than a church. On the front, the Virgin bends over her dead son's head, Mary Magdalene kneels at his feet, and Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus and other mourners close the circle around him. Much later it belonged to Giuseppe Cades, a Roman painter of the late 18th century, and his signed statement of ownership is still on the back beside the seal.