San Lorenzo, Sansepolcro

On 21 March 2024 a large canvas returned to the high altar of San Lorenzo, a small Renaissance church in Sansepolcro, the Tuscan town best known as the birthplace of Piero della Francesca. It had spent eight years at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence's state restoration workshop. The painting is the Deposition by Rosso Fiorentino, one of the restless Florentine painters later grouped as the first Mannerists.

Its date explains its mood. In May 1527 imperial troops sacked Rome, and Rosso, who had been working there, fled north. That September the Confraternity of the Holy Cross in Sansepolcro handed him a commission first meant for a local painter, Raffaellino del Colle, and he finished the picture in 1528. Around the pale body of Christ presses a dark, agitated crowd, with the Virgin flinging her arms upward and strange faces half lost in shadow behind.

The church came later. In 1554 the confraternity passed its property, painting included, to a community of Benedictine nuns, who built San Lorenzo with its arcaded portico in 1556. When the convent was suppressed in the 19th century, the buildings became an orphanage where the children were taught to weave.