The Deposition From the Cross : Art Analysis

The Deposition from the Cross
The Deposition from the Cross is a Jacopo Pontormo’s oil on wood painting which placed at the Capponi Chapel altar in the Santa Felicitac church in Florence. The Deposition is one of the classical prospects that portray the life of Jesus in the medieval art. And as a result of the convolutions of the composition, it is one in which Renaissance artists had a constant curiosity to draw such as Raphael and Caravaggio and more others. So one of my big interests of this painting is the story lay behind the deposition from the cross itself and why it became an important subject for Pontormo and the others. Moreover the disposition figures, with it are piercingly replicated appearances, vivid and ruthless colors are merged in a bleak and firmed space which opens a big issue for me of the description of this painting. In this report I will also focus on the differences of the faces of the grieving throngs and the figure of Madonna. Also, I will talk about the myth that attached with this painting that Pontormo had a drawn a self-portrait in the painting as Joseph of Arimathea.
The Deposition from the Cross is the surviving masterpiece painting done by Jacopo Pontorm and done around 1525-1528, It is an oil in wood and the size of the painting is 313 X 192 cm and the location of this painting is in Capponi Chapel in Santa Felicita di Firenze church in Florence [1].
This painting shows a landscape at night with about 11 figures. The figures make a replicated sharp form that make most of them look the same. The most capturing figure is a man that is hold up by 2 other figure. The man that holds up is half nude with only a small piece of olive color cloth covering his privies. The man’s hair is little long and orange and with also an orange bear. One of the two figures that holding the nude man is man who’s holding the legs. The man has a strange pinky colored back skin that it looks like a sun burn but not for sure. Another figure which is hard to distinguish if is it is a man or a woman who’s holding the upper part of the nude man. Although the two figures are carrying the mass of a mature man, they hardly appear to touch the land under them. The other figures look almost the same and the spaces between them are really small. All the figures rest 9 figures are appear to be women and all of them are almost wearing the same style of cloth except the bearded figure at the far right in the background of the picture. These figures seem to be a little different from the rest 10 figures since it looks out of the picture and look as if it added later to the painting. The landscape of the painting is very limited with only one shade cloud and a dark ground with a wrinkled olive colored sheet. The figurs looks like if they mournering some one.

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The Deposition from the Cross, is considered by many art historian to be Pontormo’s existing masterpiece. The Deposition generates a scene of whirlling group who moving with a sensitively emotional feeling while the Jesus’s body is carryed down from the cross and presented to his mother Mary. Even though that normally “The Deposition from the Cross” is desciping Juses been lowered down from the cross but the unpresent of the actual cross in the painting, make many historian to matter the subject of this picture and concider it as doubtful type of paint. Also the two boys that holding juses have infered in the past as two Angles whose helping the Christ in his crossing to Heaven. So the presnt of the two angle and the lack of the cross create an presumption for some historian to consider the scene to be more accurately be called a Lamentation which decribe those who are supporting the Christ who appear as distressed as the mourners. However the lack of any visible tomb interrupts that presumption, just as the lack of cross creates a dilemma for the Deposition analysis. It has also been distinguished by art historian that the locations of Virgin and her child the Christ appear to replicate Michelangelo’s famous work the Pietà, although in phontormo piece in the Deposition shows the mother and son have been split.Therefore this painting cosider to be really contovershial since it carries an essentials of a Lamentation and Entombment and also the Pietà[1]. On the other side Legend has it that Pontormo had set himself in self-portrait as Joseph of Arimathea at the upper right of the image The figure does not appear in a elementary drawing of the altarpiece realized for relocate, suggesting that Pontormo may have decided to squeeze it during the finishing of the painting. Unlike of the other, much freer and more summary beginning sketches he made for the altarpieces, this drawing is highly finished, with a subtle rendreing of the highlights of the face demonstrating that Pontormo was thinking about its tonallity for the painting. His focus here on internal emotion suggested through facial expression contrasts with the much more lively vision of himself that he made during his rest at Galluzo [3].
The figures, with their sharply modeled forms and brilliant colors are united in an enormously complex, swirling ovular composition, housed by a shallow, somewhat flattened space.
The Deposition from the Cross, or Descent, is the scene, as depicted in art, from the Gospel account of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus taking Christ down from the cross after his crucifixion (John 19:38-42). In Byzantine art the topic became popular in the 9th century, and in the West from the 10th century. The Descent from the Cross is the 13th Station of the Cross. Other figures not mentioned in the Gospels who are often included in depictions of this subject include St. John the Evangelist, who is sometimes depicted supporting a fainting Mary (as in the work below by Van der Weyden), and Mary Magdalene. The Gospels mention an undefined number of women as watching the crucifixion, including the Three Marys, (Mary Salome being mentioned in Mark (Mark 15:40), and also that the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene saw the burial (Mark 15:47). These and further women and unnamed male helpers are often shown. The scene was usually included in medieval cycles of the Life or the Passion of Christ, between the Crucifixion and the Entombment of Christ. Even in early depictions the details and posing of the composition, and especially the position of Christ’s body, are varied. The Pieta or Lamentation, showing the body of Christ held by Mary, may intervene between these two, and is common as an individual image, especially in sculpture. The Bearing of the body, showing Christ’s body being carried to his tomb, and the Anointing of Christ’s body, showing the body laid flat on the top of the tomb or a similarly-shaped “anointing-stone” are other scenes that may be shown. This last is especially important in Orthodox art, where it is shown on the Epitaphios. With the Renaissance the subject became popular for altarpieces, partly because of the challenges of the composition, and the suitability of its vertical shape. The Mannerist version of Rosso Fiorentino is usually regarded as his most important work, and Pontormo’s altarpiece is perhaps his most ambitious work. The subject was painted several times by both Rubens and Rembrandt, who repeated one of his paintings (now Munich) in a large print, his only one to be mainly engraved, as well as making two other etchings of the subject.
Pontormo’s in his composition used the mannerist style to show the characteristics of the figure.