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Three men and four women gather in a tight group around the lifeless body of a bearded young man in a landscape in this vertical painting. The people all have pale skin with red around their eyes, and tears fall down most of their cheeks. The dead man, Jesus, is at the center of the composition. His skin is ashen white, and his brown hair falls around his shoulders. Blood trickles from wounds on his forehead, palms, feet, and over his right ribs. He wears only a white loincloth. He rests across the lap of a woman, Mary, who sits on the ground and supports Jesus with her knees. Her brows are gathered high over her eyes as she looks up, her cheeks red. An ochre-yellow cloth wraps across her forehead, down the sides of her face, and across her neck and chest. A white cloth drapes over that, all under a sky-blue cloak that covers most of her burgundy-red dress. One hand disappears behind Jesus’s back, and the other arm is held out, palm up, over Jesus’s legs. The people around Jesus wear dresses, robes, and cloaks in amber yellow, emerald green, carnation pink, rose red, orange, and pale lilac. A clean-shaven man, Saint John the Evangelist, supports Jesus under the armpits as he looks at us. Saint John's lips are parted, and his long, copper-colored hair tumbles over his shoulders. By his side, in the lower left corner of the painting, a woman with long, flowing blond hair, kneels and cradles one of Jesus’s hands. She and Mary lock eyes. Another woman with a white veil over a parchment-brown wimple covering her forehead and neck crouches low to lift one of Jesus’s feet, and she looks down at the wound there. Behind her, a balding, bearded man with a fringe of white curly hair stands with his hands out wide. He holds a pair of pincers in the hand closer to us. To our left, behind Mary, the fourth woman clutches her robe to her chest with one hand and wipes tears with a fist of the fabric with the other. Along the left edge of the composition, behind Saint John the Evangelist, a man looks forlornly down at Jesus as he holds long iron nails in one hand and a hammer down by his side in the other. Grassy mounds rise steeply up to an overlook taking up the top right quadrant of the painting. There, two men hang from crosses to either side of an empty cross. Two pairs of people look at those men. A man carrying a spear and wearing a feathered cap walks on a path along the ridge. In a distant grassy meadow to our left, two men ride horses as another holds up a spear, all facing a person with their hands raised. A river winds through rolling hills back to the horizon, which comes four-fifths the way up the composition. An arched bridge spans the river, and people walk across it or row on a boat in the water near the pilings. The mountains are hazy pale blue in the deep distance, and the sky above fades from azure blue along the top of the painting to milky white along the horizon. A scrolling strip of white paper curls in the lower right corner of the composition.

Andrea Solario

Lamentation, c. 1505-1507

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 18

Medium

oil on panel

Dimensions

overall: 168.6 x 152 cm (66 3/8 x 59 13/16 in.)

framed: 201.3 x 184.8 x 11.4 cm (79 1/4 x 72 3/4 x 4 1/2 in.)

Credit Line

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Accession Number

1961.9.40

Artists / Makers

Andrea Solario (artist) Milanese, active 1495 - 1524

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Inscription

lower right on cartello in nearly effaced letters: ANDREAS...

Provenance

Baron Kinnaird, Rossie Priory, Inchture, Perthshire, Scotland. Probably purchased 1935 in England by Longhi; sold that same year to (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence);[1] sold 1954 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2] gift 1961 to NGA.

[1] According to Kress records in NGA curatorial files.

[2] On 7 June 1954 the Kress Foundation made an offer to Contini Bonacossi for sixteen paintings, including the NGA painting which was listed as Altarpiece Deposition by Solario. In a draft of one of the documents prepared for the Count's signature in connection with the offer, this painting is described as one "which came from my personal collection in Florence." The Count accepted the offer on 30 June 1954; the final payment for the purchase was ultimately made in early 1957, after the Count's death in 1955. (See copies of correspondence in NGA curatorial files and The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1211.)

Associated Names

Contini Bonacossi, Alessandro, Count
Kinnaird, Lord
Kress Foundation, Samuel H.
Longhi

Bibliography

1956: Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1951-56. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida and Fern Rusk Shapley. National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1956: 170, no. 67, repro., as Pietà.

1959: Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 175, repro., as Pietà.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 124, as Pietà.

1968: Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 1:411.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 111, repro., as Pietà.

1968: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XV-XVI Century. London, 1968: 139, fig. 332.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 330, repro., as Pietà.

1979: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:435-436; 2:pl. 315, as Pietà.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 100, no. 68, color repro., as Pietà.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 378, repro., as Pietà.

1988: Wheeler, Marion, ed. His Face: Images of Christ in Art: Selections from the King James Version of the Bible. New York, 1988: 127, no. 98, color repro.

2004: Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 98, no. 72, color repro.

2005: Sander, Jochen. Hans Holbein D.J. Tafelmaler in Basel 1515-1532. Munich, 2005: 223, nt. 146.

2022: Brown, David Alan. Overshadowed--Leonardo da Vinci and Bernardino Luini. Milan, 2022: 27-28, color fig. 14, 65 note 40.