Bachiacca

Verdi, Francesco d'Ubertino
Bacchiacca

Florentine, 1494 - 1557

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About fifty pale-skinned men, women, and children along with a giraffe, ox, and other animals gather in groups across a hilly landscape in this vertical painting. The people wear robes or dresses in shades of carnation pink, honey orange, sky blue, ruby red, leaf green, or golden brown. The people’s skin is painted pearl white or, in a few instances, tinged with gray. A crowd of eight men and women gather in the lower left quadrant behind a man who points to the right with a stick. Others sit on the ground or on rocks, stand at barrel-sized urns, or bend to the ground. A porcupine, white rabbit, black bear, cow, cheetah-like animals, and several others are spaced along the foreground, close to us. The gathering continues into the distance to the right, where a path leads to a cluster of buildings along a jagged coastline. Craggy mountains rising from water line are shaded aquamarine blue under a cloudy sky. A few tall, spindly trees grow up the center of the composition, and a tall, rocky outcropping takes up most of the upper left quadrant.
Bachiacca, The Gathering of Manna, 1540/1555, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.4

The Gathering of Manna

Bachiacca · 1540/1555 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1952.5.4

Two muscular men lean away, whips raised, from a third man tied to a freestanding column, in a courtyard-like space in front of a deep landscape in this vertical painting. At the center of the composition, the pale-skinned man bound to the column, Jesus, stands with his body facing us. He turns his head to our right, perhaps looking at the man to that side. Jesus is cleanshaven, and his long brown hair falls back behind his shoulders. A delicate gold ring creates a halo, with red spokes to the top and sides. Ropes wrap around his upper arms, and he is nude except for a blue cloth around his hips. The column is mottled with tan and pale pink, and is topped with a gold, leafy capital. To each side, the men with the whips have more tan skin than Jesus. They stand in the same pose as each other, with their weight mostly in their right legs, and right hands raised with the whips. But the man to our left stands with his body facing us, and the one to our right stands with his back to us, so they each lean away from Jesus. The man to our left wears a pink cloth tied around his waist but is otherwise nude. His mouth is wide open, and his free hand reaches across his chest. His royal-blue cap is decorated with lavender-purple and gold ribbons and plumes. The man to our right is nude except for a parrot-green cap wrapped with a band of orange, like a turban. The area in which they stand has a floor patterned with butter yellow and white. On the far side of the courtyard, a central arch is flanked by one to each side, which are cut off by the left and right edges of the composition. The entablature running across the top of the arches is parallel to the top edge of the painting. The landscape beyond has grassy, rolling hills dotted with trees, reaching back to hazy blue mountains along the horizon. The sky above deepens from pale blue over the mountains to azure blue across the top, seen through the arches. Several vertical cracks are visible on the surface of the panel.
Bachiacca, The Flagellation of Christ, c. 1512/1515, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.81

The Flagellation of Christ

Bachiacca · c. 1512/1515 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1952.5.81