Vatican Museums

This relief in ivory applied on slate depicts the removal of Jesus from the Cross according to a well-known iconography derived from Michelangelo, traditionally considered to be based on works by Buonarroti himself (drawings in the Teyler Museum in Haarlem and the British Museum in London). The great success of the original invention is demonstrated by the number of pictorial and sculptural translations that reproduce the basic concepts, such as the many versions mentioned in the Guardaroba of the Medici in Florence. Among these, a relief in ivory in the Silver Museum in Palazzo Pitti is notable for its affinity with the Vatican exemplar: a replica of a lost original by the sculptor Nicholas Piper (italianised as “Pippi”) of Arras based on a design by Daniele da Volterra, a gift of the Grand Duke Cosimo to the Viceroy of Catalonia, Don Ermando de Toledo (1579). It is likely that both the Vatican and the Florentine ivories were produced in Rome by the same Pippi - one of the undisputable protagonists of the Sistine (Sixtus V) art scene – with the help of plaster works such as the one now preserved in Casa Buonarroti, moulded on a wax model attributed to Daniele da Volterra and dating from 1560.