A Descida da Cruz

Barocci had nearly stopped painting. Years earlier, working in Rome, he fell gravely ill and became convinced that jealous rivals had poisoned him at a picnic. He went home to Urbino and for a long stretch produced almost nothing. This Deposition, made for the merchants' guild of Perugia and set on its altar on Christmas Eve of 1569, was the great work of his recovery. He staged the lowering of Christ's body as a burst of movement and colour, the swooning Virgin below, a ladder tilting across the sky. Local painters studied it for generations. He made some 36 preparatory drawings for it, and it still stands on the cathedral altar it was painted for.