MASP

The work depicts a full-length Christ standing with shroud and bandage. The left hand bears the marks of the nails, while the right hand holds the chalice catching the blood spurting from the wound in His chest. e statue is badly damaged, having probably been placed in a niche or recessed into a wall, only to be broken when it was later forcefully removed. It was subsequently put together again and patched, particularly around the legs and the fingers of the left hand. e rear part has been repaired to some extent by cementing cavities. The inventory record attributes this work to Lombardian sculptor Cristoforo Solari, called “il Gobbo”, and suggests that it may originally have been part of the facade of Milan Cathedral. is is quite likely, especially bearing in mind that Candoglia marble was used exclusively in Milanese construction. However, the sculpture is rather small, there is detailed work in the beard and hair and no obvious signs of exposure to atmospheric agents are to be observed. It is therefore di cult to ascertain if the statue was placed outside the Ambrosian cathedral, or inside on the altar or the Eucharist tabernacle. Indeed, the statue may not be from Milan at all. The theme may be derived from the iconography of Christ bearing the cross and worshipped by an angel collecting the blood in the chalice, as in Agostino di Duccio’s relief in the Malatestiano Temple in Rimini, or in Giovanni Bellini’s paintings in the Na- tional Gallery, London. e Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan has a painting by Crivelli, a native of the Delle Marche region of Italy – under Venetian inuence culturally – in which Saint Francis holds the chalice to the Redeemer. Scholars have seen a connection between this iconography and sermons on the sacredness of the blood of Christ preached by San Giacomo della Marca in Brescia in 1462. e work exhibited at the Masp seems to belong to a later period, since it is lacking in dramatic e­ects in terms of interpretation and is, to some extent, inspired in elements of the style of Antiquity. e Christ depicted here is not the historical Christ, but the glorious Christ aer the Resurrection. He gathers the blood in the chalice so as to o­er it to the faithful who take part in the Eucharist. In this work, the pain of martyrdom, typical of the gures in the Crucixion of Christ, now becomes noble generosity. To illustrate this transition, the sculptor resorts to the iconography of heroic nakedness, which derives from Classical sculpture. e likeness between the representations of Christ and the pagan hero is warranted precisely by the strong sacramental connotation of the image, which stresses the sacredness of the blood of the Messiah and His sacrice. The style of Milanese sculptor Cristoforo Solari hardly accords with the Classicism of the São Paulo work. Solari shows a naturalistic strain even during his moments of courtly inspi- ration, as can be noted in the 1495-1499 portraits for the sepulcher of Ludovico, il Moro, and his wife in Certosa de Pavia. In his subsequent works, Christ in the Column or Adam, for the Milan Cathedral, his style develops towards the dramatic. The Masp’s Christ Ressurected lacks some of Cristoforo’s typical facial traits: the profuse, tensed, and deeply-set eyebrows; the waved hair and beard, parted by furrows; the gouged pupils. In fact, the Masp’s statue – although its almost archeological reproduction of pre-Hellenistic sculpture betrays the inuence of Solari’s art – is closer to what Venturi dened as early-16th-century Venetian neo-Classicism. Moreover, Mantua, where the relic of e Most Precious Blood of Christ was preserved, was during that period and thanks to Mantegna, one of the major centers radiating the culture that aimed at replicating Antiquity. Sculptors such as Antico and particularly Giancristoforo Romano, who came from Milan, worked in the city. In the Museum of the Palazzo Ducale, a relief preserved in tu­ and attributed by Fiocco to Mantegna himself, depicts the solitary gure of Christ Pouring His Own Blood into the Chalice: an iconography very close to the Christ presented here. We should therefore consider a sculptor younger than Solari who, like him, was able to blend Mantegna’s style with Venetian inuence. The details of the right-angled face with its very short and curly beard seem to suggest that the author of the Christ in the Masp Collection was inuenced by the style of the reliefs created by Tulio and Antonio Lombardo for the Saint’s basilica in Padua. The handling of the shroud, which droops from the le arm and envelops the rear part of the gure reaching the right leg seems, however, to be inspired in models representative of Roman Classicism, brought to Milan chiey by Agostino Busti, known as Bambaja. e somewhat Leonardesque touch found in the face of the Christ, whose right-angled volumes are achieved through subtle shis from light to dark, may also be signs of Busti’s inuence. But the Mannerist animation of Bambaja’s drapery and his haunted exuberance are lacking in the São Paulo sculpture: the drapery is taut and composed of vertical folds as in the Classical columns, and seems to have been modeled literally on the robes worn by the Roman orators depicted in ancient statues in a style very close to that of Giancristoforo Romano. e cum- bersome proportions again remind us of Solari. However, the anatomy, particularly the handling of the muscles of the torso and the back, is more attenuated than in Cristoforo’s gures. It should be added that, due to the probable positioning of the work, at some distance from the immediate view, it was executed in rounded and smooth volumes, over which light fades evenly, a phenomenon typical of the works of the sculptors most receptive to Leonardo’s suggestions – such as Giovambattista da Sesto or Aprile da Carona. Therefore, it seems appropriate to suggest the name of Andrea Fusina, who worked on the construction of the Milan Duomo until his death around 1526. A comparison of the sculptures of the Birago monument, executed in 1495, with the Joshua or the Judas Maccabaeus, in the Milan Cathedral Museum, shows similar characteristics: decoratively arranged hair; draperies evidently inspired by the pre-Hellenistic period; its denitions of images, consciously taken from Antiquity, and in its very non-Classical proportions.

— Unknown authorship, 1998

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