This initiative is now in its 16th edition, which every year offers to a large national and international public the possibility of admiring a universal work of art.

From February 20 to 11 May 11, 2024, the Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Giovanni Bellini (1438/1440-1516) from the Vatican Pinacoteca will be the masterpiece that the Milanese Museum will put on display as a starting point for not only historical-artistic reflection but also spiritual, giving visitors the opportunity to focus on the theme of the Passion of Christ.

The precious panel, preserved today in the Pope’s Museums, originally constituted the cymatium of the imposing Pesaro Altarpiece – created by Bellini between 1472 and 1474 for the high altar of the church of San Francesco in Pesaro and now in the Civic Museums – one of the greatest masterpieces of Italian painting, which marks the painter’s maturity and marks his role as the leader of Venetian painting.

The scene depicts the moment in which the body of Christ, shortly before burial, is anointed with oils and perfumes.

In a narrow and compressed space, rendered with a strongly foreshortened cut from bottom to top which takes into account the height at which the panel must have been located, the statuary presence of the four characters stands out, Christ, Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus and the Magdalene, holding that of Jesus in her hands.

The exhibition, as already suggested in the title, is completed with a section that presents the works of four contemporary artists in dialogue with Bellini’s masterpiece and with the eternal and always current themes suggested by the work such as death, pain, pity and in particular the value of care.

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The exhibition initiative sees the joint curatorship of Nadia Righi, Director of the Carlo Maria Martini Diocesan Museum, Fabrizio Biferali, Curator of the Department for Art of the 15th-16th centuries of the Vatican Museums and Giuseppe Frangi, President of the Giovanni Testori Association.