The Passion of Christ

Giovan Battista Naldini 1577-1580

Audio description of the artwork

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This artwork was painted by Giovan Battista Naldini for evident devotional purposes probably around 1580, and concentrates in a single dramatic view all the main scenes of the passion of Christ. Echoes of his master Pontormo, and influences of Northern painters and Sebastiano del Piombo he saw and met during his stays in Rome, emerge from the vibrant scene, in which the uniform brown background is embellished in the foreground with precious pinkish-blue tones.

Technical information

Author: Giovan Battista Naldini
Title: The Passion of Christ
Date: 1577-1580
Material and technique: Oil on panel
Size: 66x127 cm
Location: Palazzo Pretorio Museum
Second Floor

This painting combines in the bustling scene the main episodes of the Passion of Christ, distributed over various planes, with the Crucifixion occupying the central part, and rendered particularly lively and dramatic thanks to an almost visionary use of colour, with brown and pinkish-blue nuances showing echoes of Pontormo, his first master, and Giorgio Vasari, with whom Naldini collaborated on various occasions. The work comes from the artist’s later career, and is directly inspired in the drawing of some scenes by Roman paintings by Sebastiano del Piombo and Jacopo Coppi, which he certainly saw between 1577 and 1588. On the other hand the cold colour tones remind us of works by Nordic painters, which he probably saw in Rome.

In the hospital Spedale della Misericordia, from which they come, the scenes of the Passion were matched with another similar panel, alas now lost, showing the Passion of the 10000 martyrs. In boththe paintings, the passion of Christ and that of the martyrs is presented as a path of sorrows, but also as a path of hope and final victory, and they provided a source of reflection and comfort for the hospital patients.