Lamentation over the Dead Christ

The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, dated 1615 and in the Accademia Ligustica in Genoa, is among the earliest of Strozzi's surviving dated works and shows him establishing his Baroque credentials at the beginning of his mature career. The Lamentation — the mourning of Christ's body by his mother, the Magdalene, John the Evangelist, and sometimes Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus — was the most emotionally extreme subject in Christian narrative painting. Strozzi's version, departing from Mannerist elegance toward the direct emotional confrontation of the Baroque, brings warmth and physical presence to grief that could easily become theatrical. The Genoese Accademia Ligustica, founded as an art academy, holds important examples of the Ligurian Baroque tradition.

Canvas with the concentrated grouping typical of Lamentation compositions — figures pressed close around the dead Christ's body, creating a dense emotional and physical cluster. The pale, inert body of Christ is the compositional centre around which warm, grieving, living flesh is arranged. Strozzi's early style shows careful detail in faces and hands before his later boldness.