The Lowering of the Cross with Sts Mary ...

The Lowering of the Cross — the Deposition, in which Christ's body is taken down from the cross — was the most physically demanding of the Passion subjects, requiring multiple figures negotiating a heavy human body. Procaccini's 1618 canvas at the Art Gallery of New South Wales specifies additional saints in the full title (Mary and others), expanding the emotional community of mourners around the scene. By 1618 Procaccini was at the height of his powers and his influence, and this large canvas for an unknown original location would have demonstrated his full compositional range. The AGNSW acquired this through the art market as part of its European Baroque holdings, and its presence in Sydney speaks to the wide dispersal of Italian Baroque painting through eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European collecting.

The Deposition's compositional problem — the dead Christ's body being lowered, figures above and below the cross — creates a vertical cascade that Procaccini organises through interlocking gestures and supporting hands. The body of Christ, pale and cold, must anchor the centre while the living figures around it project their grief outward. Warm and cool tonal contrasts between the living and the dead provide structural clarity.