‘Mantegna of Pompei’ on Show at Vatican Museums

Vatican City: A Deposition of Christ, whose recent restoration has enabled a definite attribution to Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna, will go on show at the Vatican Museums for three months from March 20 before returning to its home at the Shrine to the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary at Pompei near Naples. The exhibition, titled ‘The Pompei Mantegna, A Rediscovered Masterpiece’, will be held in the Vatican’s Picture Gallery, Room XVII.

According to Ansa News Agency, the attribution was made three years ago. Barbara Jatta, Director of the Vatican Museums, reported that Monsignor Tommaso Caputo, the Pompei Archbishop, invited them to view the work in March 2022. It was immediately understood that beneath the layers of repainting lay remarkable pictorial material. The restoration revealed iconographic and technical details, confirming the work as an autograph of Mantegna, thus returning to the history of art a masterpiece thought to be lost. Following this discovery, the Vatican Museums initiated diagnostic tests, research, and restoration.

Fabrizio Biferali, curator of the department for Art of the 15th-16th centuries of the Vatican Museums, stated that the scientific analyses and restoration clarified that the artwork is not a copy but an original painting by Mantegna. This discovery is celebrated for its dramatic foreshortening technique, exemplified in Mantegna’s Dead Christ.