Christ Risen from the Tomb
c. 1490
Artist, Lombard, c. 1453 - 1523


West Building Main Floor, Gallery 18
Artwork overview
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Medium
oil on panel
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Credit Line
-
Dimensions
overall: 114.5 x 61.2 cm (45 1/16 x 24 1/8 in.)
framed: 149.5 x 81.3 x 10.2 cm (58 7/8 x 32 x 4 in.) -
Accession
1952.5.1
Artwork history & notes
Provenance
Art market, Italy; exported from Milan probably between 1792 and 1835 and in any case not later than 1859-1860;[1] Arthur L. Nicholson, London, by 1915;[2] (Arthur U. Newton Galleries, New York), by 1936;[3] purchased April 1945 by the Samuel H. Kress Collection, New York;[4] gift 1952 to NGA.
[1] Into one of the vertical members of the painting's cradle a piece of wood with two identical seals is inset. This was obviously from the back of the panel before it was thinned. The seals are decorated with the Austrian imperial eagle and bear a fragmentary inscription of which the words "per l'esportazione" can be read. This type of seal was used by the exportation office of the Accademia di Brera in Milan on the paintings to be exported during the time of Francis I of Austria (1792-1835). Similar seals are visible on the back of a number of early Italian panel paintings; among others are Piero della Francesca's St. John the Evangelist in the Frick Collection in New York and the Saint Augustine by the same artist in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon (see Andrea Di Lorenzo, "Il politico agostiniano di Piero della Francesca: Dispersione, collezionismo, restauri, recostruzione," Il Polittico Agostiniano di Piero della Francesca. Quaderni di Studi e Restauri del Museo Poldo Pezzoli 2, Milan, 1996: 17, 39 notes 32-34 and 52, repro. 105). According to Di Lorenzo (letter of 26 April 2000), the Accademia probably stopped using the seal in 1848, when Ferdinand I of Austria, successor of Francis I (who used the same symbol) abdicated. In any case, the seal was not used after 1859-1860, when Austrian dominion in Milan ended.
[2] See Bernard Berenson's letter dated 26 June 1915, to Arthur L. Nicholson (copy in NGA curatorial files), in which the painting is mentioned.
[3] The painting was shown at the Old Masters' Exhibition at the Arthur U. Newton Galleries in October 1936 and mentioned in the exhibition reviews published in the New York Times (7 and 11 October) and in the New York American (17 October) of the same year. The fact that Berenson did not list the painting in his Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, Oxford, 1932, suggests that by 1932 it was already on the art market.
[4] The bill of sale from the Arthur U. Newton Galleries to the Kress Foundation is dated 24 April 1945 and marked paid April 27 (copy in NGA curatorial files). See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/524.
Associated Names
Exhibition History
1936
Old Masters' Exhibition, Arthur U. Newton Galleries, New York, 1936.
1939
Exhibition of Paintings from the Arthur U. Newton Galleries, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 1939, no. 1.
1941
10th Anniversary 1931-1941, Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, Maryland, 1941, no. 10.
1946
Recent Additions to the Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1946, no. 781.
1998
Ambrogio da Fossano detto il Bergognone. Un pittore per la Certosa, Museo Civico del Castello Visconteo, Pavia, 1998, no. 39, repro.
Bibliography
1927
Venturi, Adolfo. Studi dal vero: Attraverso le raccolta artistiche di Europea. Milan, 1927: 336-339, fig. 219.
1945
Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 85, repro.
1946
Frankfurter, Alfred M. Supplement to the Kress Collection in the National Gallery. New York, 1946: 45, repro.
1947
Sandberg Vavalà, Evelyn. “Ambrogio Borgognone in a recent publication.” The Burlington Magazine 89 (1947): 306.
1948
Mazzini, Franco. Ambrogio da Fossano detto il Bergognone. Monza, 1948: 72, 117.
1951
Einstein, Lewis. Looking at Italian Pictures in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1951: 62-64, repro.
1959
Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 172, repro.
1965
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 16.
1968
National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 9, repro.
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XV-XVI Century. London, 1968: 20-21, fig. 43.
Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 1:46, as Risen Christ.
1972
Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, MA., 1972: 26, 746.
1975
European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 36, repro.
1979
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:78-79; 2:pl. 51.
1983
Coppa, Simonetta. “Ambrogio da Fossano.” In Günter Meissner, ed. Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker. 3 vols. Leipzig, 1983-1990: 2(1986):601.
1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 47, repro.
1988
Wheeler, Marion, ed. His Face--Images of Christ in Art: Selections from the King James Version of the Bible. New York, 1988: 128, no. 103, color repro.
1989
Marani, Pietro C. “Per la formazione del Bergognone: Una traccia.” In Ambrogio Bergognone: Acquisizioni, scoperti e restauri. Exh. cat. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, 1989: 9, 12 n. 9, fig. 8.
1998
Sciolla, Gianni Carlo, ed. Ambrogio da Fassano detto il Bergognone: Un pittore per la Certosa. Exh. cat. Museo Civico del Castello Visconteo, Pavia, 1998: 246, 338.
2003
Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 126-129, color repro.
Wikidata ID
Q20174465