O Homem das Dores (The Man of Sorrows) - Sandro Botticelli
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Profoundly arresting and highly original, Sandro Botticelli’s Man of Sorrows is a defining masterpiece from the artist’s late career. Dating to the cusp of the sixteenth century, this painting enriches our understanding of a Florentine artist best known for his beautiful Madonnas, captivating portraits, and enchanting allegorical and mythological scenes. After the political and religious uprisings in Florence in the 1490s, a notable shift occurred in Botticelli’s pictorial language, and his works became more somber and spiritual in character. Although religious in subject, this painting has a strikingly realistic quality that imparts the individuality of a portrait. Christ’s two distinct natures as both perfectly divine and perfectly human find their fullest expression here, a testament to the prodigious talents of one of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance. An important rediscovery, this picture comes to light as scholars argue for a more nuanced reading of Botticelli’s work in the context of his own spirituality and a fuller understanding of the creative impulses that led to the innovative masterpieces of his late years.
In Botticelli’s Man of Sorrows, the viewer encounters Christ wearing a pleated crimson robe in a strictly frontal pose, set against a somber, dark background. His half-length figure, nearly life-size, fills the composition; his long, flowing auburn hair frames his brightly illuminated and sensitively modeled face. Delicate drops of blood from the sharp tendrils of his crown of thorns trickle into the softly reddened areas around his slate gray eyes, his gaze at once both sorrowful and serene. A closely trimmed beard sets off his high cheekbones, strong jaw-line, and thin upper lip, ever so slightly raised, as if parted to speak. With tightly bound arms and wrists, he crosses his hands in front of his chest, displaying to the viewer the wounds of the Crucifixion on his hands and at his side. Though nearly imperceptible, the delicate asymmetries in the picture further imbue it with a palpable sense of immediacy and remarkable psychological depth, particularly in the faint irregularity of the position of Christ’s eyes. and even more so in the gentle lean of his head to the left, a slightly straining muscle in his neck suggesting he has perhaps only just shifted position.
The delicate halo of angels painted en grisaille and orbiting Christ’s head is perhaps the painting’s most distinctive feature. Clothed in billowing fabrics, their graceful figures contrast markedly with the crown of long, sharp, blue-green thorns. All but one angel shield their grief-stricken faces from the sight before them, as they hold the Arma Christi, or the instruments of Christ’s Passion that symbolize his death and suffering. Botticelli captured each of these implements in naturalistic colors and with meticulous detail. On the left is the ladder that features in the Raising of the Cross and the Descent; the scourge used to flagellate Christ; and the lance with which he was stabbed; on the right is the column to which Christ was bound and flogged; as well as the pincers used to draw out the nails; finally the sponge soaked in vinegar and fixed to a pole that is offered to Christ before his death. Crowning the design at the top is the cross, which is prominently positioned above Christ’s head as a symbol of his sacrifice, but also as the universal emblem of the Christian religion. A trio of angels connected by the elegant, serpentine lines of a ribbon-like cloth—possibly the shroud to wrap Christ’s body for burial—is arranged around the cross: the central figure kneels in reverence before it; the one at left holds up the three nails used to fasten Christ’s hands and feet to the cross; and the angel on the right may have once held the hammer to drive in these nails. The most conspicuous omissions from the Arma Christi are the chalice used to catch Christ’s redeeming blood as well as the sudarium, or veil, used by Saint Veronica to wipe the sweat from Christ’s brow as he bears his cross to Calvary. The viewer is left to imagine these in the hands of one of the angels hidden, or partially hidden, from sight, including the one whose foot appears from behind Christ’s hair at right.
Indeed, in Botticelli’s conception, the Passion is further evoked by two accessories: the crown and the rope used by the soldiers for his arrest, rendered here as doubled loops that bind Christ’s upper arms and wrists, as well as a variation of the words of the titulus from the cross (INRI: Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum, or Jesus the Nazarene King of the Jews) partially inscribed on the neckline of his robe: [CHR]ISTO/ JESVNAZAR/ ENOR[…].
In this painting, Botticelli seamlessly blends Christ’s divinity and humanity into one, or in other words, his dual nature as both fully God and fully man. The directness of the image—above all the piercing quality of Christ’s gaze—evokes secular imagery and portraiture in such a way that it elicits a powerful and discernible response. Concurrently, the close-up view presents the head and torso of Christ displaying three wounds: those in his hands from when he is nailed to the cross and the wound in his right side inflicted with a lance by one of the soldiers after his death. Thus, the viewer is invited to contemplate simultaneously the Crucifixion, Redemption, and Resurrection. The intense religious experience elicited in the mind of the viewer by the sheer physical presence of the crucified Christ illuminates both his humanity and his divinity.
Botticelli’s Man of Sorrows has been in private hands since the nineteenth century when it was first recorded in the collection of the famed opera singer Adelaide Kemble Sartoris (1815–1879). The painting remained with her descendants until its auction in 1963, where it was acquired by the present owner. At the time of that sale, Federico Zeri identified it as an autograph work by Botticelli and suggested a completion date of about 1500. Due in part to the picture remaining out of the public eye for much of the last century, thus hampering its study and discussion, it was largely overlooked in critical scholarly discourse. Until its inclusion in the major monographic exhibition devoted to Botticelli at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt in 2009–2010, the painting was not widely known in the literature on the artist, receiving only a brief mention in Ronald Lightbown’s catalogue of Botticelli’s work, in which he took a restrictive view of the artist’s production. More recently, however, this highly original painting has been reassessed in the context of Botticelli’s late career and Zeri’s opinion in favor of its autograph status has been upheld by several art historians, foremost among them Laurence B. Kanter and Keith Christiansen, both of whom know it firsthand and consider it a remarkable work by Sandro Botticelli.
As pointed out by Kanter, there are long-standing misconceptions surrounding Botticelli’s late career as first perpetuated by Vasari, and the artist’s late paintings still provoke some debate today. Botticelli’s work around the turn of the century became increasingly spiritual, and his Mystic Nativity of 1500 in the National Gallery, London —the only signed and dated painting by the artist—is a case in point. Herbert Horne, the early twentieth-century cataloguer of Botticelli’s work, accepted as autograph only five paintings from the artist’s last decade. In his 1978 publication, Lightbown listed this Man of Sorrows under "workshop and school pictures" as one of the versions of this subject to have been attributed to Botticelli or his workshop. Unillustrated, he describes it as the Redeemer, following his discussion of a group of three paintings of the Resurrected Christ: a version at the Detroit Institute of Arts attributed to Sandro Botticelli by some scholars but deemed to be a workshop product by others; and two variants at the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo and the Fogg Museum, Cambridge.
When presented in the 2009-2010 exhibition at the Städel Museum, this painting was denoted as an unpublished, fully autograph work. In the exhibition catalogue, it is discussed in detail by Bastien Eclercy, who writes: "…the rediscovered painting from a private collection thus not only represents an important new example of Botticelli’s late period, but also adds a striking facet to our understanding of the depiction of Christ in the Renaissance." At the time of the exhibition, Scott Nethersole referred in very few words to its attribution in his review of the show. He proposed that the attribution of the aforementioned Detroit Christ, described in the Städel catalogue as a workshop painting of around 1490 and depicting a different iconographic type, be swapped with that of the present painting on qualitative grounds. However, comparison of the two does not bear out this view, and Nethersole has since revised his opinion and is considerably more positive about the present painting's attribution. He now considers The Man of Sorrows to have been largely painted by Botticelli. Following examination of the infra-red images of the painting, he is reassured by the changes throughout the composition and particularly those made to the hands, consistent with Botticelli's workshop practice.
As Eclercy aptly argues in his entry on the present Man of Sorrows: "In both quality and complexity, the painting far surpasses the half-length depictions of Christ from the Botticelli workshop currently known to scholars." Christiansen singled out the extraordinary figure of Christ, whose face shows signs of humanity and judgement: Christ as the Son of Man and Christ the judge. Kanter considers it a masterpiece of the artist’s late period and dates it to the first decade of the 1500s, placing it later than the Mystic Nativity of 1500 in the National Gallery in London, and perhaps even as late as 1510, very close to Botticelli’s death. While Kanter supports the autograph status of the Detroit Christ, he considers that painting to be one in a series of repetitions of types, but he regards the present Man of Sorrows as a wholly original work by Sandro Botticelli.
The most inventive feature of this painting is the remarkable ring of angels encircling Christ’s head. This motif, along with the bold conception of the painting as a whole, belie the originality of a master of the highest order and further point to Botticelli’s creative mind. Traditionally, such angels were found surrounding Christ as the Man of Sorrows as he stands in the tomb and displays his wounds, whereas here they form Christ’s halo. In terms of pose and the all’antica style of their garments, as well as the articulation of wings and feet, the angels are comparable in form and expressiveness to those in Botticelli’s Coronation of the Virgin altarpiece from San Marco, today in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, and in the aforementioned Mystic Nativity.
These angels and their strong graphic presence, moreover, are especially akin to the celestial figures in one of Botticelli’s greatest achievements: his magnificent series of drawings made to illustrate the epic poem The Divine Comedy (La Divina Commedia) by Italy’s most celebrated medieval poet, Dante Alighieri (1265–1321). This project to illustrate all one hundred of the poem’s cantos was undertaken for Lorenzo the Magnificent’s cousin and former ward, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici (1463–1503), the owner of Botticelli’s famous mythologies. The poem describes the author’s imaginary journey through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. Botticelli grappled with the immense challenge of rendering Dante’s allegory on the quest for spiritual enlightenment for many years, beginning this endeavor probably in the 1480s and continuing until the 1490s. In his Lives of the Artists, the sixteenth-century biographer Giorgio Vasari tells us Botticelli wasted much time and effort on his Dante project, "neglecting his work and thoroughly disrupting his life." Although this ambitious program remained unfinished, it still stands as one of the greatest expressions of Botticelli’s genius, and clear visual affinities can be drawn between the figures that animate Dante’s poems and the angels in the Man of Sorrows. Close comparisons, for example, appear in Botticelli’s drawings for Paradiso IV and Paradiso XXVIII, both of which are today preserved in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin.
Further corroboration for the Man of Sorrows autograph status lies in the remarkable visual parallels between it and works found elsewhere in Botticelli’s corpus. Indeed, use of subtle gradations of light and shade to model Christ’s face, a trademark stylistic element of the artist, has recently been compared with Botticelli’s portrait of Michele Marullo Tarcaniota. The manner in which the hands are painted, particularly in the way both little fingers are rendered with a slight bend, is a consistent detail employed by the artist throughout his career, such as in all three of the figures in the Bardi Altarpiece of about 1484–1485 in the Staatliche Museen in Berlin. Additional analogies are visible in Botticelli’s Lamentation in the Poldi Pezzoli Museum, a late work by the artist that not only features a similar blue-green crown of thorns but also employs a figure covering her face in grief, a gesture echoed by the angels that comprise Christ’s halo. This action is a seeming allusion to a pathos ridden formula suggested by Leon Battista Alberti in his De Pictura, particularly how by covering a mourning figure’s face the artist creates an emotional response that allows the audience to more completely imagine the full extent of this state of grief.
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, known as Sandro Botticelli, was born around 1444–1445, the son of a tanner. He lived and worked in Florence for nearly all his career, and his considerable talents were recognized at a young age. A consummate Italian Renaissance artist, he was the progenitor of some of the most enduring images of the age. In the 1470s and 1480s, Botticelli secured regular commissions and support from the Medici family and their elite entourage, for whom he painted opulent religious works and sophisticated mythologies expressing the highest ideals of classical literature and philosophy. Botticelli’s Man of Sorrows, however, arose from a markedly different moment in his career, one that bore witness to a dramatic shift in the political, social, and religious life of the Florence he knew so well.
This painting is thought to date to the final years of Botticelli’s artistic practice, from the years around 1500 to perhaps even as late as 1510, the year he died. The last years of the fifteenth century were deeply troubled: in 1494 Florence was invaded by foreign armies, the Medici family was expelled, and fears of an apocalypse at the turn of the half-millennium were fueled by the hell-fire preaching of the fervent Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498). Appointed Prior of San Marco, the convent favored by the Medici, Savonarola grew in power and popular appeal in the 1490s. A charismatic preacher, he railed against the sin and iniquity of the Florentine populace, becoming a veiled religious dictator. He declared Florence a new Jerusalem, demanded that the citizens purge themselves of sin and instigated the Bonfire of the Vanities: luxury objects, clothing and paintings considered idolatrous were burned, including possibly some works by Botticelli. Eventually the Signoria—Florence’s ruling council—arrested Savonarola, tried him, and made him confess to being a false prophet. On 28 May 1498, they had him hanged and burnt as a heretic in the Piazza della Signoria. Yet even after his death, Savonarola’s impassioned religiosity had a lingering effect on the populace of Florence and on the pictorial language of artists for years to come.
Savonarola scorned the type of art which gave Botticelli his fame, though he remained devoutly Christian throughout his life. In his biography of the artist, Vasari declared the painter to have been among Savonarola’s followers (known as piagnoni, or “weepers”). Indeed, Botticelli’s brother, Simone, with whom he shared a house, was documented as a supporter of Savonarola, and in November 1499, over a year after the friar’s execution, Simone wrote in his diary that he used Sandro’s studio for clandestine meetings of sympathizers. Vasari’s claim that Botticelli never painted again after Savonarola’s death is untrue. Instead, the artist undoubtedly fell under the friar’s influence, as did the wider Florentine population, and Savonarola’s teachings impacted not only the subjects he chose to depict but also those in demand among the collecting public of this period around the turn of the millennium. In these later years, Botticelli began to produce more sober and spiritual paintings, and his style became more archaic in form. Themes from the sermons of the Dominican preacher surface in paintings such as the Mystic Nativity in the National Gallery and the Mystic Crucifixion of about 1500 preserved in the Fogg Museum, both of which transcribe separate apocalyptic visions of Savonarola. Certainly, The Man of Sorrows underscores Savonarola’s message of a return of his contemporaries to the fundamental tenets of the Christian faith.
Rooted in early Christian imagery, half-length depictions of Christ reached their apogee during the High Renaissance. The potency of this representation inspired varied treatments of the theme on both sides of the Alps, with Northern artists focusing on the trauma of Christ’s Passion and Italian artists exploring the inherent humanity of the Godhead incarnate. Botticelli’s Man of Sorrows is wholly reflective of this dual creative impulse explored by some of the greatest artistic geniuses of the early modern era.
In his unique design of the Man of Sorrows, Botticelli integrated several thematically related pictorial types whose iconographic traditions occasionally overlap. First is the archetypal image of the later Middle Ages of Christ as the Man of Sorrows (or Imago pietatis), a devotional image in which Christ prominently displays the wounds in his side and hands after his Crucifixion. Second is the Ecce Homo, or the moment when a scourged Christ stands before Pontius Pilate and a crowd. In this tradition, he is shown bound with ropes with his arms crossed before him, and he wears a crown of thorns and a purple robe—the color emphasizing his royal status as Christ the King, a descendant of the house of David. The final is the vera icon, or the “true image” of the face of Christ, like the one imprinted on Veronica’s veil as he carried his cross on the way to Calvary; in this tradition Christ is often shown frontally, upright, in direct confrontation to the viewer. In seamlessly combining all of these pictorial types into one united whole Botticelli captures an image that suspends temporal constraints.
Though unprecedented in his oeuvre and the wider artistic landscape, Botticelli’s iconographic invention reflected influences from both the North and the South. The impact of Northern artists is perhaps reflected in Botticelli’s choice and treatment of this subject matter, particularly insofar as such works conveyed an intensity of spiritual feeling shared by Botticelli himself. For example, the iconography of the Redeemer, shown in the act of blessing as the Salvator Mundi and combined with the attributes of the Man of Sorrows, wearing a crown of thorns and presenting his wounds, is prevalent in fifteenth century Netherlandish painting. Botticelli’s Christ in Detroit, for instance, bears a marked resemblance to a Man of Sorrows by Hans Memling whose provenance can be traced to a Florentine collection and is today preserved at Palazzo Bianco, Genoa. The direct manner in which Christ is presented also harks back to other models, the work of Eyckian artists such as Petrus Christus offering some additional analogies. For instance, Christus’ small devotional image of Christ in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of about 1445 similarly treats the head as a portrait. The connection between Botticelli and the North also runs in the other direction, and echoes of Botticelli’s highly original iconography are found in the later work of Haarlem painter Jan Mostaert (act. 1498; d. 1552/3), particularly in his Christ as the Man of Sorrows with a Halo of Angels in the Hamburger Kunsthalle.
But perhaps one of the most striking predecessors to Botticelli’s exploration of this theme is Fra Angelico’s Head of Christ of circa 1435 in the Church of Santa Maria del Soccorso in Livorno, one of the earliest half-length portrayals of Christ against a somber background explored by an Italian artist, though with clear roots also in the North. Like the present painting, Fra Angelico shows a frontal Christ crowned with thorns with bloodshot eyes and wearing a red robe with the words REX REGUM inscribed in the gold of his collar. Fra Angelico’s work was influential on contemporary and later artists, even inspiring a copy by Benozzo Gozzoli, today in the Museo della Basilica in San Francesco in Assisi. In Botticelli’s treatment of Christ, there is also a pronounced emphasis on the wound in his side, underscoring his identity as the Resurrected Christ. Andrea del Verrocchio’s celebrated sculpture of Christ and St Thomas, completed in 1483 for the exterior of Orsanmichele in Florence, has also been discussed as a point of departure for Botticelli’s image. In the sculpture, Christ opens his robe to reveal the wound so that Thomas may see for himself by touching that Christ is risen from the dead. The implicit meaning in Botticelli’s painting places the viewer in the role of Thomas, thereby acting as witness to Christ’s Resurrection.
Botticelli’s “pathos laden” image of Christ as the Man of Sorrows is described as “resolutely symbolic” by David Ekserdjian, who favors a dating of around 1500 for the work. Interestingly, the most striking contemporary comparisons to this painting are two other masterpieces from exactly the same moment: Albrecht Dürer’s Christ-like Self-Portrait and Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi. The former is the ultimate example of an artist looking at earlier Flemish models of this type in order to re-imagine their own image making. The latter, while differing in mood, shares with the protagonist of the present picture an “apparent refusal to allow the viewer to look away,” according to Ekserdjian. Indeed, Botticelli endows Christ's gaze with great intensity of feeling, compelling the viewer to look and urging us to meditate.
This painting has survived in overall good condition, allowing for a fuller appreciation of Botticelli’s confident skills as a painter. Although painted late in the artist’s life, characteristic elements employed by Botticelli throughout his career are visible throughout. The modeling of Christ’s flesh, for example, is built up with delicate brushstrokes of brown and pink atop soft creamy tones. The three dimensional cross at the top of Christ’s head was rendered by way of incisions into the painted surface, a practice commonly employed by Botticelli to help lay out certain elements of his composition, as visible in his Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Roundel.
Further insight into the artist’s creative process is unveiled through modern imaging technology. Infrared imaging of Botticelli’s Man of Sorrows reveals a number of changes he made as he worked through the composition. Some adjustments are visible, for example, in the placement of a few of the thorns on his temple, an alteration to the position of Christ’s eyebrows, a slight shift in the outline of his chin, and a lowering of Christ’s wound at his side. The distinct changes observable in the rendering of Christ’s hands further underscore Botticelli’s authorship, particularly in the refined contours of the fingers as well as their placement in space. In addition to the noticeable shift in the foreshortening of Christ’s proper left thumb, his middle finger on that same hand was originally conceived as visible outside of the open wound, an idea the Botticelli ultimately changed in his final conception.
The same infrared imaging also shows elements of a partial and unrelated underdrawing, affirming that the panel was originally prepared for an entirely different image. Although difficult to discern in an upright position, when turning the infrared image upside down, outlines of what appear to be early stages of the figures of the Christ Child and the Madonna come more clearly into view. Mother and Child appear close to the upper edge of the composition and seem to be pressed cheek to cheek in an endearing composition, derived from the venerable image of the Virgin Eleousa (of “tenderness”), a type that was common in the Greek tradition and adapted by many later Italian painters of the Renaissance. The head of the Christ Child, with his upward gaze, is supported by the left hand of the Madonna, and the thick folds of her mantle are visible at her shoulder near the right of the composition. This particular compositional pose is found in a number of paintings by Botticelli and from his workshop, indicating that the earlier idea for a painting of the Madonna, a mainstay of Botticelli’s production, was replaced with what would be a virtually unique and inspired invention by the master.
The reverse of the panel bears what appears to be an old and as yet unidentified inventory number (355.) painted in red in the upper left. Also visible near the center of the upper edge is a wax seal that may point to provenance of the painting in Rome, possibly where the earliest recorded owners, the Sartorises, acquired it, as they resided in the Eternal City for many years.
Like many paintings by Botticelli, the provenance of this painting dates back to the nineteenth century. It was in this period of a reawakened interest in late quattrocento Florentine history and art that Botticelli resumed his rightful position as one of the most admired and beloved artists of the Renaissance. Botticelli’s Man of Sorrows once formed part of the collection of the wealthy politician Edward John Sartoris (1814–1888) and his wife Adelaide Kemble Sartoris (1815–1879), a famous opera singer and the niece of the celebrated actress Sarah Siddons and John Philip Kemble. It then descended in the Sartoris family until Adelaide’s great-granddaughter, The Hon. Pamela Margaret Stanley, consigned it in 1963 for sale at Sotheby’s, where it was acquired by the present owner.
Adelaide and Edward Sartoris were well-connected in society and within many artistic circles in the places they lived and traveled, spending ample time in Italy, particularly Rome, as well as Paris and London. Frederic, Lord Leighton, met the couple in Rome in 1853, and they quickly were counted among his closest friends. Regularly frequenting Adelaide’s literary and artistic Salons in Rome, Leighton formed a very strong relationship with Adelaide, one that could be described as an intense but platonic adoration, devotion and reliance, and one that would last until her death in 1879. Leighton painted several portraits of Adelaide and Edward’s eldest daughter, May Sartoris, perhaps the most recognizable being the one today in the Kimbell Art Museum. May was also the grandmother of the Hon. Pamela Margaret Stanley, the consignor of the present painting when it last appeared on the market in 1963. A recently rediscovered painting by Leighton entitled “Italian Girl,” which belonged to Edward and Adelaide Sartoris, was recently sold at Sotheby's, London, on 14 July 2021, lot 1. Their collection also featured a number of Old Masters, including the present work as well as a Gentile da Fabriano today preserved in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., as part of the Samuel H. Kress Collection.
