The Dead Christ with Mary Magdalene and Angels

In 1650 Iacomo Manilli, author of a guidebook to the Borghese villa, listed a Dead Christ on stone by Alessandro Turchi. By 1700 the family inventory had given the same picture to Annibale Carracci, the Bolognese master of the Farnese Gallery. Carracci's name held through the inventories of 1790 and 1833, until the art historian Adolfo Venturi, cataloguing the collection in 1893, restored the painter's name. Every scholar since has accepted it.

Turchi painted it around 1616 or 1617, in his first years in Rome, and the museum links the half-circle of figures around the body to Annibale's own Pietà. On the left an angel lifts a burning torch over the scene. Mary Magdalene slips her fingers under Christ's hand, another angel bends to kiss his feet, and the crown of thorns lies on the ground below.