Valerio Belli, Medallions with Scenes of the Passion

Photogallery

Valerio Belli, medallions with Scenes of the Passion
Valerio Belli, medallions with Scenes of the Passion
Valerio Belli, medallions with Scenes of the Passion
Valerio Belli, medallions with Scenes of the Passion
Valerio Belli, medallions with Scenes of the Passion
Valerio Belli, medallions with Scenes of the Passion
Room of Tributes

The three ovals, depicting the Capture of Christ, the Way to Calvary, and the Deposition in the Sepulchre belong to the same complex that includes the altar Cross, cat. 62144, mentioned by Vasari as produced by Belli for Clement VII and which documents from the Pontifical Archive allow us to date to his stay in Rome in from 1523 to 1524. The medallions, based on drawings of the Raphael School, represent the point of greatest contact with the artistic research of the painter from Urbino, with whom they share the dimensions and solidity of spatial construction. It is probable that in the structural economy of the furnishings, the three crystals carried out a role similar to that assigned to the three linked pieces in the Cross of London (Victoria and Albert Museum), where analogous subjects inspired by the stories of the Passion occupy the three surfaces of the gilded silver foot at the base of the item. The artistic fortune of the three medallions is testified by the large number of replicas made of them, demonstrating iconography and inventione in the form of lead or gilded bronze plates.