The Mocking of Christ

1598 · Chiesa dei Santi Biagio e Carlo ai Catinari, Rome

religious

Today Cavaliere d'Arpino's (Cesari's) Mocking of Christ is virtually forgotten, but in the mid-seventeenth century the biographer Giovanni Baglione considered it to be one of the artist's very finest pictures. Considering Cavaliere d'Arpino's tremendous output, this was not faint praise. When Baglione saw the painting, it was already in the sacristy of the church, where it had been bequeathed by Antonio della Valle along with three other pictures.

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About the Artist

Giuseppe Cesari

1568 – 1640

Italian Mannerist painter, also known as Cavaliere d'Arpino, active mainly in Rome. He had an enormous reputation in the first two decades of the 17th century, when he gained some of the most prestigious commissions of the day, most notably the designing of the mosaics for the dome of St Peter's (1603-12). Although some of his early work is vigorous and colourful, his output is generally repetious and vacuous, untouched by the innovations of Caravaggio (who was briefly his assistant) or the Carracci. He was primarily a fresco painter, but he also did numerous cabinet pictures of religious or mythological scenes in a finicky Flemish manner.

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