Christ Carrying the Cross, Giorgio Vasari

Exhibition Label:
"Giorgio Vasari and Court Culture in Late Renaissance Italy," Sep-2012, Sally Cornelison and Susan Earle
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.

Label 2009:
Giorgio Vasari was a successful artist, architect, and gifted author of the sixteenth century. While he received many prominent commissions as a painter and architect, today he is best known for The Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, published in 1550 and 1568. As its title suggests, Vasari’s Lives includes detailed biographical information for many of the most important Italian artists of the Renaissance and remains an essential source for art historians to this day.

This painting of Christ Carrying the Cross, a subject Vasari painted several times in his career, appears in the inventories of the collection of Vincenzo Borghini. A Benedictine monk of high social standing, Borghini ran the Florentine orphanage known as the Hospital of the Innocents. He was also active in the Florentine art scene, cultivating friendships with many artists, including Vasari. Borghini acted as an advisor for many of Vasari’s projects and was an avid collector, amassing a con¬siderable number of original paintings, drawings and copies of famous works. Like many paintings in Borghini’s collection, the Spencer’s Vasari panel hung for many years in the hospital in Florence.