Christ Carrying the Cross

Marco d’Oggiono, the Milanese painter and close follower of Leonardo da Vinci, made this small Passion panel about 1495–1500, at the height of his activity in the Lombard capital. The picture belongs to the family of Leonardesque Passion images that enjoyed an enormous vogue in turn-of-the-century Milan: the bowed Christ, the paired executioners at his shoulders, and the mourners pressing behind derive from compositions associated with the master’s studio, and for generations the panel was itself attributed to Leonardo. The recent literature has placed it among d’Oggiono’s own works, painted while he was completing the master’s abandoned commissions, and it preserves the Leonardesque sfumato and the tender, devotional mood of the circle at its most accomplished. The painting is held in the J. Paul Getty Museum.