Pinacoteca Room XII

The lowered body in Caravaggio’s Deposition draws people into a close, weight-bearing group. A man bends under Christ’s legs, while the women above register grief through different gestures. The painting was made for a chapel in Santa Maria in Vallicella in Rome around 1600–1604. The room brings together other large seventeenth-century religious pictures. Domenichino’s Communion of St Jerome centres on an aged saint receiving the Sacrament. Poussin’s Martyrdom of St Erasmus and Guido Reni’s Crucifixion of St Peter present different scenes of suffering and public witness. These works once answered particular church commissions. Here, their scale and the gestures of their figures can be compared within the octagonal gallery designed for the Pinacoteca in 1932. Let one body or one pair of hands hold your attention before moving across a whole composition. A raised arm, a supporting hand or a kneeling figure can tell you how the painter has arranged the people around the event.