Christ in piety

Tommaso di Piero Trombetto 1526

Audio description of the artwork

00:00 / 00:00

The painting depicts Christ in the sepulchre supported by an angel and presents a theme particularly favoured by popular devotion. Tommaso di Piero Trombetto would become a most reliable interpreter of this theme in Prato in the early decades of the 16th century. A painter and waxworker, but also a trumpeter for the city council, he was able to capture the leanings of Prato's middle class, aimed at calm, domestic narratives that were only superficially influenced by great contemporary Florentine painting.

Technical information

Author: Tommaso di Piero Trombetto
Title: Christ in piety
Date: 1526
Material and technique: Tempera on panel
Size: 110x82 cm
Location: Palazzo Pretorio Museum
First Floor

In an environment of measured devotion, the echoes of the great masters arrive late in the towns far from the capital, and the local schools echo the more complex themes with particular slowness. The subject of this artwork is taken from the central detail of the predella that Filippino Lippi painted with his workshop around 1495 to complete the altarpiece for the Convent of the Palco with Cristo e la Madonna intercessori presso Dio per l’Umanità (Christ and the Virgin Mary Intercessors with God for Humanity), now in Munich. After about twenty years, Trombetto revisited this composition, emphasising the signs of the passion, particularly dear to Savonarola, and the figure of Christ who is tenderly supported by the angel in an atmosphere of palpitating devotion. Documented in the Sala dell'Udienza dei Ceppi (Ceppi Audience Room) and paid to Trombetto in 1526, the panel was later placed in the Prison Chapel adjacent to the Palazzo Pretorio, built in 1682. In addition to the artworks exhibited in this room, the Ritratto del Cardinale Niccolò da Prato (Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò da Prato) is by the same master.