Giovanni Battista Naldini, 'Lamentation of the Dead Christ', about 1572

Christ has just been taken down from the Cross. He is being prepared for burial in this crowded painting by the Florentine artist Giovanni Battista Naldini. His limp and lifeless body lies horizontally across the picture. His followers cluster around him, expressing their grief. His mother, the Virgin Mary, clasps his left hand. Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy secret follower of Christ, holds Christ’s torso. A young naked man, perhaps John the Evangelist, wraps a shroud around his legs. Nicodemus, a Pharisee who helped Joseph, stands in the foreground on the right, looking down at Christ’s feet.

On the ground in front of Christ are the crown of thorns and the pincers used to remove the nails from his hands and feet. The urn could hold the jug of sour wine given to Christ while he hung on the Cross, or it might contain the spices Nicodemus brought to embalm the corpse. Mary Magdalene kneels at the front of the painting, her back to us, her hands resting on an urn. She is often shown with a pot of oil, anointing the feet of the dead Christ. We can see this in Gerard David’s Lamentation.

In the background to the left are three crosses. Christ’s cross stands in the centre, as described in the Christian Bible (John 19:18). This cross is empty and a ladder leans against it. But the bodies of the two thieves executed with him still hang from their crosses. After the Crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for permission to take the body down. He and Nicodemus ‘wrapped the body with spices in linen cloths, according to the custom of the Jews’ (John 19:38–42). They laid the body in an unused tomb in the Garden of Gethsemane. We can see this tomb at the top right. A man leans out of the open mouth of a rock tomb. Another man struggles to lift the slab that will seal it.

The Lamentation itself is not described in the Christian Bible. Instead, it comes from apocryphal gospels and medieval devotional literature. It was a popular subject in both Italian and Northern Renaissance and Mannerist painting. The National Gallery Collection has numerous examples, including Dosso Dossi’s Lamentation over the Body of Christ and Annibale Carracci’s The Dead Christ Mourned. Naldini painted another version for the church of Santa Croce in Florence in 1583.

This composition connects to an altarpiece he painted for the Florence cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in 1572. From 1564, the Duke of Florence, Cosimo I de’ Medici, ordered Giorgio Vasari to completely modernise the church. Workers demolished the medieval rood screen and the private chapels lining the nave. A rood screen is a decorative barrier that separates the clergy from the congregation. This allows the faithful to see the high altar and take part in the celebration of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the Christian ceremony of Holy Communion, where bread and wine represent Christ’s body and blood. Vasari designed new altarpieces to line the walls, one for each bay. Well-known artists of the era decorated these with large panels. Vasari painted three himself, and Naldini completed three more. This picture may be a creative version of Naldini’s altarpiece, made for a private patron, rather than simply a copy.