Deposition of Christ

The Deposition of Christ is a painting by the Italian artist Agnolo di Cosimo, known as Bronzino, completed in 1545. It is housed in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Besançon, France. A copy by Bronzino can be found in the Palazzo Vecchio. This portrayal of the Deposition, although it depicts all the characters typically shown when Jesus is being taken down from the cross, more correctly should be characterized as a Lamentation and is an excellent example of late Mannerism or Maniera. History The painting was originally commissioned to be the altarpiece for the chapel of Eleonora of Toledo in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Shortly after it was completed in 1545, Eleonora's husband, Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, shipped the picture to Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle, a chief counselor of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, as a diplomatic gift. Granvelle installed it in his private chapel in Besançon. In 1549, Granvelle commissioned the construction of a grander funerary chapel on his Besançon estate. A year later, he died. The new chapel, with Bronzino's altarpiece installed, was consecrated in 1551. Subsequently, there is no record of the work from the seventeenth century until the French Revolution. To preserve it after Granvelle's chapel was partially destroyed, the picture was housed in the Besançon city hall from 1793 until it became a part of the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts when the museum opened in 1834. After sending the original to Granvelle in 1545, Cosimo requested a copy for Eleonora's chapel that Bronzino painted eight years later in 1553. The second version is the one found in the Palazzo Vecchio today. To accompany the original altarpiece, Bronzino painted side panels depicting John the Baptist (the patron saint of Florence) on the left and Saint Cosmas (a patron saint of the Medici family and Cosimo's name-saint) on the right. Their inclusion in Eleonora's chapel was as much a political statement as a religious one and these panels may have been portraits of Giovanni dalle Bande Nere (Cosimo's father) as John the Baptist and Cosimo as Saint Cosmas. At some point between 1545 and 1553, Eleonora requested that Bronzino replace the side panels of the saints with more pious panels depicting the Annunciation. This must have been a low priority because the new altar wings were not completed until 1564, two years after Eleonora's death. The Annunciation panels can be viewed in Eleonora's chapel today.