Lamentation over the Dead Christ with the Virgin, Saint John the Baptist, Saint Catherine of Alexandria and a Donor

Ernando Sastri, a Spaniard raised at the Florentine court of Cosimo I de' Medici, became a knight of Santo Stefano in 1576. Cosimo had founded the order in 1561 to fight the Ottoman Turks and the pirates of the Mediterranean, and its red cross shows on the breastplate of the man in armour at the edge of this Lamentation, his coat of arms propped beside him. Ernando later commanded the Fortezza da Basso, the Medici fortress in Florence, and in the early 1590s ordered this panel from Santi di Tito for its chapel of Saint John the Baptist. So the Baptist, in his camel skin, stands where John the Evangelist usually mourns. Christ's body lies across the front, and on the altar it sat just above the table where Mass was said, the Eucharistic sacrifice that Protestants disputed and the Catholic reform reasserted. In a corner lie the nails, hammer, pincers and crown of thorns.