Christ Carrying the Cross, Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574)

In addition to devising the decorative schemes of several of Vasari’s important Medici-sponsored projects, the owner of this painting, Vincenzo Borghini, was the prior of the Hospital of the Innocents, a charitable Florentine orphanage. In Borghini’s apartment at the hospital the panel hung next to the Conversion of St. Paul attributed to Ventura di Vincenzio Ulivieri. The Christ Carrying the Cross has been ascribed to a number of artists associated with Vasari, but the painting’s extraordinary and well-documented provenance, as well as its style and iconography, leave little doubt that Vasari painted the panel. He derived its dramatic composition from Northern European and Italian prints, most of which are on view in the exhibition, and a Raphael painting. Almost certainly based on a larger altarpiece that Vasari painted in Rome in 1553 for Ersilia Cortese, a noblewoman and relative of Pope Julius III, the picture influenced Vasari’s later work and that of his assistants and followers.