the Deposition

Salviati's Deposition of 1547, held at the Opera di Santa Croce in Florence — the organization responsible for the great Franciscan basilica of Santa Croce — represents one of his major devotional paintings executed for the city's religious institutions. The Deposition (Christ being lowered from the cross) was among the most emotionally demanding and compositionally challenging of Passion subjects, requiring the painter to organize the physical difficulty of lowering a large body while conveying maximum spiritual and emotional intensity. Salviati's mid-career treatment of this subject brings to bear his Roman training, his study of Michelangelo's sculptural Pietàs, and the influence of Rosso Fiorentino and Pontormo's earlier Mannerist treatments of the same subject. The Florence context ensured an audience alert to the entire local tradition of Deposition paintings.

Oil on panel or canvas, the Deposition composition is organized around the central problem of the lowering body and the grieving figures who receive it. Salviati deploys strong diagonals — the ladders, the arms reaching up and down — to create the compositional energy appropriate to a physically demanding action. The palette moves between the cool blues of Mary's mourning drapery and warmer tones in other figures.