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Old Master Paintings

Wednesday 26 November 2025, 06:00 PM • Rome

168

Giovanni Francesco Crivelli (attivo nel Cinquecento)

Lamentation over the dead Christ

Estimate

€ 8.000 - 12.000

Sold

€ 34.170

The price includes buyer's premium

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Information

oil on silk canvas
52 x 63 cm
signed lower left IOHANES FRACIS P CRIVELVS PINSIT

Photographic references
Zeri Photo Archive, no. 255746

Literature

D. Benati, In cerca di Giovanni Francesco Crivelli, in Federico Zeri lavori in corso, edited by A. Bacchi, D. Benati, A. De Marchi, A. Galli, M. Natale, Bologna 2019, pp. 349-50, 356-57, fig. 3 (as unknown location).

The mysterious figure of Giovanni Francesco Crivelli, a still little-known painter active between Romagna and the Marche at the beginning of the sixteenth century, was first studied and identified by Federico Zeri. Starting in the 1980s, the scholar compiled in his archive several photographs of works attributable to Giovanni Francesco Crivelli, two of which are signed. One of these is precisely the Deposition offered here, which Zeri recorded as of unknown location and which now appears on the market for the first time.

The painter’s corpus also includes a signed Madonna and Child, which appeared in a Finarte auction in Milan in 1989, another Madonna and Child of larger format, and a Deposition preserved in Baltimore at the Walters Art Museum, attributed to the painter by Daniele Benati.

The closest comparison for our painting is naturally the work of the same subject in Baltimore, where the motif of a painted faux frame with vegetal decoration reappears. The two works are also united by the same devotional and penitential tone, consistent with the cultural climate prevalent from the late fifteenth to the early sixteenth century, in which sacred paintings were intended to evoke emotional engagement, drawing the viewer into a painful empathy. This corresponds to the suffering and contrite attitudes of all the figures, not only the “historical” protagonists but also—and especially Saint Francis, depicted in the foreground with the stigmata clearly visible, and Saint Jerome in the background, striking his chest in adoration of the Cross. The presence and prominence of Saint Francis suggests a Franciscan convent commission.

Given the complete lack of biographical information on Giovanni Francesco Crivelli, it remains extremely difficult to identify the artist; however, according to Federico Zeri, he has no connection with the better-known Crivelli, Carlo and Vittore, active in the same period in the Veneto and the Marche. The scholar rather emphasizes Crivelli’s Ferrarese and Adriatic traits, clearly visible in the pietistic attitudes of the figures and the angularity of the drapery.