Christ before Herod

Paolo da Caylina (Italian (Brescia), about 1485–about 1545)

Medium/TechniqueFresco transferred to canvas

Dimensions211.5 x 180.3 cm (83 1/4 x 71 in.)

Credit LineCharles Potter Kling Fund

Accession number45.768

On View

Not on view

ClassificationsPaintings

Collections

Europe

ProvenanceAbout 1535/1540, upper meeting hall of the confraternity of Santa Maria de Dom, church of SS Ippolito e Cassiano, Brescia, Italy (original commission) [see note 1]; 1897, frescoes removed and conserved by Giuseppe Steffanoni, Bergamo [see note 2]; 1898, still with Steffanoni. 1903, art market, Venice (?) [see note 3]. 1914, Walter L. Ehrich and Harold L. Ehrich, New York; 1914, given by the Ehrichs to the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; 1945, sold by Yale to the MFA for $3,750. (Accession Date: October 11, 1945)

NOTES:
[1] This is one in a group of frescoes (MFA accession nos. 45.5 - 45.8, 45.768) that made up part of a cycle of the Passion of Christ in this room. In 1532, the church had been ceded to the confraternity; the members, in turn, commissioned the frescoes.

[2] The confraternity was suppressed in 1797, at which time the building was acquired by the city and the upper meeting hall was used as a school. During the second half of the nineteenth century, some of the frescoes were removed; these are today at the church of Santa Maria delle Consolazioni, Brescia, and the Svépmüvészeti Muzeum, Budapest. In 1897, the building was sold to the Società Telefonica di Brescia, the Brescia telephone company. Eleven remaining frescoes were taken down and sent to Bergamo for conservation. In 1898, six of these were selected by the Pinacoteca Tosio e Martinengo, Brescia. The remaining five must be those at the MFA. If additional scenes had completed the cycle, they have today been lost or destroyed. For more information, see Francesco de Leonardis, in Paolo da Caylina il Giovane, ed. Pier Virgilio Begni Redona (Brescia, 2003), cat. no. 50, pp. 165-174.

[3] According to Francesco de Leonardis (verbal communication, October, 2005), there is a letter of November, 1903, in the city archives of Venice from the Soprintindenza (Superintendency of Venice) to the city of Brescia inquiring about the removal of the frescoes and suggesting that at that time they were on the Venetian art market. The response from the city of Brescia has not been located in the archives.