The Lamentation over Christ

Before the Revolution this panel belonged to the parish church of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, in Burgundy, given by a Madame Moreau and her sisters, who had inherited it. It was seized, and at the end of 1798 it reached the national museum in the Louvre, listed as a very beautiful picture of the Italian school. The donors' relatives asked for it back in 1802 and in 1806, and around 1821 the church was sent a painting by the French artist Ménageot instead. For decades the Louvre gave it to Squazzella, a pupil of Andrea del Sarto. Only in the mid-19th century was it moved to the Flemish school, and today it carries the name of Otto van Veen, painted in the early 1600s from a print after Raphael. In the foreground lie the nails, the pincers and the crown of thorns.