Execution: Bandinèlli, Baccio (Florence, 1493 - Florence, 1560) (Sculptor)
Flagellation
Flagellation
Production: Around 1532
Area: Sculpture
Technique(s): Carrara marble
Dimensions : H. 63 cm ; W. 81 cm ; D.10 cm
Inventory no.: A.202
Photo credit(s) :
Lauginie, François
Camus, Christophe
Cartel
Bandinelli was the son of a Florentine silversmith, with whom he received his first training. He continued his apprenticeship with Giovanni Francesco Rustici. Protected by the Medici, he became one of the family's appointed sculptors. Like most Florentine sculptors, he was influenced by Michelangelo, whom he imitated and competed with.
The artist depicts the Passion episode in which Christ is scourged by two executioners, against a bare background. This simplicity enhances the muscular bodies and guarantees the legibility of the composition, while underlining the subtle rendering of the flesh. The Flagellation theme had already been treated by Florentine artists, including Donatello, from whom Bandinelli may have borrowed the gesture of the executioner grasping Christ's hair, and Michelangelo in drawings conceived around 1516. Christ's pose is also reminiscent of the ancient sculpture of the Laocoon, discovered in Rome in 1506 and of which Bandinelli made a copy around 1520.
The subject can be understood as an allusion to the humiliations suffered by Pope Clement VII (Julius de' Medici) during the sack of Rome by the troops of Emperor Charles V, five years earlier. Just as Christ was scorned and beaten by his executioners, the pope was humiliated by the emperor's mercenaries. According to artist Giorgio Vasari, the work was probably presented by Bandinelli to Pope Clement VII between December 1532 and February 1533, when he met Charles V in Bologna. The work's itinerary between the papal collections and the Château de Dampierre-en-Burly (Loiret), where it decorated the chapel before its acquisition by the museum, is not known.
Provenance
Probably presented by the artist to Pope Clement VII (1478-1534), 1532-1533.
Collection of Clement VII (1478-1534).
Chapel of Château de Dampierre-en-Burly.
Donated by Amédée de Béhague (1803-1884) to the Musée d'histoire et d'archéologie d'Orléans, 1829.
School
Italy
Location
Museum of Fine Arts
2nd floor
Room: Renaissance in Italy