The Lamentation with Angels

This is a rare example of the activity of Palma il Giovane on pietra di paragone. It is comparable to another in a Milanese private collection, of circa 1600, exhibited at the Palazzo Reale, Milan, in 2000. Depicting the same subject and similar in size, the Milan work differs in its composition, that of the present picture being somewhat more intimate (see G. Fossaluzza in the exhibition catalogue Pietra Dipinta. Tesori Nascosti del '500 e del '600 da una collezione privata milanese, Milan, 2000, pp. 76-77, no. 37). Both Giorgio Fossaluzza and Stefania Mason tentatively identify the Milanese picture with a Pietà on slate mentioned in the early seventeenth-century inventory of the collection of Bartolomeo della Nave, friend of Palma and collector of his pictures. The entry in the inventory is not very specific, as tends to be the case for small devotional paintings, and it might well relate to either of the paintings, or indeed to another, undiscovered one.

We are grateful to Dr. Stefania Mason Rinaldi for confirming the attribution on the basis of photographs.