Christ the Redeemer

Abstract

This painted bust dated to the first quarter of the sixteenth century loosely resembles an image type known as Christ the Redeemer that was popularized by Verrocchio and his workshop in the late quattrocento. The prototype was based on descriptions of Christ's features, believed to have been written by an eye witness. As is typical of other busts, Christ has curling locks of hair and a parted beard. He glances at the viewer who presumably would have been positioned at eye level. A recent restoration revealed that the head of Christ is made of terracotta while the bust is made of stucco, suggesting that the head was taken from another sculpture, perhaps one that was full-length, and reattached to another support to create a new sculpture. The restoration also revealed that the sculpture had been repainted numerous times throughout its five-century history to maintain its devotional efficacy and perhaps to suit new aesthetic tastes of the period. These repaintings have been removed to reveal the original, life-like polychromy. This bust of Christ was briefly displayed in the first museum set up at the Ospedale degli Innocenti and can now be seen in the newly renovated Museo degli Innocenti in Florence. Photograph(s) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.