Lament over the Dead Christ (Moretto)

Lament over the Dead Christ is a 1526–1530 oil on canvas painting by Moretto da Brescia, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Two copies of the work are in Italian private collections, whilst a third is in the parish church of San Giovanni Battista in Coccaglio in the Province of Brescia.[1]

Painted late in the painter's youth, it shows strong similarities to the central panel of Paolo Caylina the Younger's Deposition Altarpiece from around the same time, though there are also notable differences in their use of colour, such as the brighter and clearer colours used by Moretto. Some of the elements reused by Moretto in Lament also recurred later in his oeuvre and so the work gives a clear idea of Moretto's training and education as an artist.[1]

No records survive of its commissioner and original location.[2] It is first recorded in the 19th century, when it was in the Egremont collection, from which it was acquired at an unknown date for the Cook collection in Richmond-upon-Thames, which also contained Moretto's Enthroned Madonna and Child with Saint James the Great and Saint Jerome.[2] In 1898 Pietro Da Ponte wrote of it, attributing it to Cesare Magni,[3] though he does not cite his source for this attribution.[2] In 1947 it was sold to the Kress collection, which in 1939 became part of the National Gallery of Art in Washington.[2]

One of the first art historians to study the work was Pietro da Ponte, who called it "a canvas notable for the great expression of melancholy in its figures".[3] In 1913 Tancred Borenius correctly dated it to the painter's youth, made the link to the Deposition Altarpiece and noted the strong similarities between its figure of Mary Magdalene and the woman at Jesus' feet in Moretto's much later Supper in the House of Simon the Pharisee (1550).[4]