The Lamentation over the Dead Christ

Around 1510 Girolamo Romanino was a young painter from Brescia, on the mainland west of Venice, still absorbing everything the lagoon city had to offer. You can feel two of those debts here. The soft, smoky colour and the low mournful light come out of Venetian painting, from Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione. The raw grief and the sharp, almost harsh handling of the dead body owe something to German prints, above all Albrecht Dürer, who had spent 1505 to 1507 in Venice and left his mark on painters across the region. The subject is the moment after the Cross, Christ laid out and mourned before burial. Romanino was barely into his twenties when he painted it, one of the earliest works we have from his hand.