The Descent from the Cross

Author: Gert Jan van der Sman

Battista Franco’s career as an artist was launched in the spring of 1536, when the architect and sculptor Raffaello da Montelupo (1505-c.1567) asked him to contribute to the decoration of an arch to be erected in Rome for the triumphal entry of Emperor Charles V. The young painter moved to Florence immediately afterwards, where he worked with Raffaello on a similar project. While he was there various people showed him drawings by Michelangelo (1475-1564), which greatly enhanced the development of his own style.

The drawing discussed here is related to one of Franco’s earliest independent paintings, The Entombment or Lamentation of Christ of c.1537, which is now in Lucca (fig.).^[1] It was the first time that he depicted an episode from Christ’s Passion. In the foreground the Virgin Mary is supporting her son’s lifeless body. The composition is in a vertical format and has an unusual arrangement. On the right there are three prominent figures. The man in the painting who is looking back over his shoulder with a penetrating gaze is identifiable as John the Evangelist.

The young Franco employed a Mannerist approach to his task. He based his depiction of the nude body of the dead Christ with his dangling forearms on A Children’s Bacchanal by Michelangelo, with a drunken man who has fallen asleep in the foreground.^[2] Raffaelo da Montelupo probably gave Franco a drawn copy after Michelangelo’s invention that enabled him to become familiar with the design before it appeared in print.^[3]

At least three composition sketches preceded the Lucca painting. In addition to the Rotterdam drawing there is a large study sheet in Milan (with a comparable watermark) and a drawing in a private collection in Dessau.^[4] The Milan sheet appears to be a little earlier than the other two preliminary studies. The centre of the sheet is taken up with the composition of the Passion scene, but the borders are filled with rapid sketches of anatomical details and studies of faces. One of the sketches is a repetition of the face of John the Evangelist, in which Varick Lauder (2004) recognised a second borrowing from Michelangelo, namely a facial type by someone in the great master’s circle.^[5]

In the Rotterdam drawing Franco followed the main scene from the Milan sheet fairly closely, focusing on the framing of the two figure groups within the rather narrow picture surface. He uses a few thin pen lines to indicate that he intended to fill the space behind the Virgin with the head of an extra figure. The drawing in Dessau, which centres on the group around Christ, has a similar outline of a head. In the painting it was worked up into the face of a mourning woman whose forehead is veiled. All the figures in the painted version have been posed differently, with the exception of Christ. The Virgin, for instance, has turned her head to the right, and John the Evangelist, who is seen from behind, is more prominent. The top left corner of the painting is also filled with mourners. It is noteworthy, too, that the head of the old man on the left has been replaced by a portrait, which may be the likeness of the person who commissioned The Entombment.

The Rotterdam drawing demonstrates that the young Franco was already a gifted draughtsman. One notes, in particular, the sensitive handling of line and expressive characterization of the foreground figures inspired by Michelangelo.