Le Christ mort soutenu par des anges

Rosso Fiorentino painted this in Rome around 1525 for Leonardo Tornabuoni, a Florentine bishop at the court of Pope Clement VII. It is an odd, beautiful thing. The dead Christ is a smooth, idealised young nude, more asleep than dead, tended by four grave adolescent angels, the grief cooled into something quiet and strange. That was the new Florentine manner, later called Mannerism, which prized elegance over raw feeling. Then history broke in. In 1527 the emperor's unpaid troops stormed and sacked Rome, and Rosso fled with almost nothing. This panel was apparently still in his studio, and it survived only by being handed to a nun at a Florentine convent for safekeeping. It reached Boston centuries later.