| dc.description.abstract | This wooden sculpture, now housed in the Museo di Villa Guinigi in Lucca, is documented to have been made by Matteo Civitale in 1487. The wooden statue is mostly in good condition, except for a missing pinky and other restored fingers, but very little of the original polychromy remains. This must have been an important part of the original object, as the fact that it was "ornamented with colours and gold" is mentioned in the document. Surely the polychromy added to the realism and pathos of this image of the suffering Christ, particularly the use of paint to depict the bleeding from the wounds. This subject, the Man of Sorrows, is not a moment in the life of Christ but an eternal icon that visualizes Christ's suffering. Civitali, however, has posed the figure of Christ as if walking forward, in a pronounced contrapposto, with the head tiling to one side. This creates the illusion of an informal moment in a story, something that is happening in front to the viewer, and so the icon seems to have come to life. Photograph(s) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. | en |
