Pompeii, attributed to Mantegna a newly discovered painting. It will go on display at the Vatican Museums

Is there an unpublished work by Andrea Mantegna in Pompeii? A discovery that was officially announced today by the Prelature of Pompeii is making noise: a Deposition of Christ preserved in the Pontifical Shrine of the Blessed Virgin of the Holy Rosary in Pompeii has in fact been attributed to the great Venetian painter. The attribution comes following a collaboration between the Vatican Museums and the Shrine: the work has undergone technical and documentary analysis, and from next March 20 it will be on display in Room XVII of the Pinacoteca of the Vatican Museums in the exhibition Il Mantegna di Pompei. A rediscovered masterpiece. After the Roman event, the canvas will return to Pompeii, finding its permanent location in a section of the Diocesan Museum.

The story of Andrea Mantegna’s Deposition of Christ is shrouded in an aura of mystery. Documented in the 16th century in the basilica of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, the work had disappeared from historical sources, raising doubts about its real existence and possible attribution to Mantegna. That there was a work by Mantegna in the basilica is historically attested: in fact, in 1524, the humanist Pietro Summonte wrote to his friend Marcantonio Michiel that in Naples there was “in Santo Dominico a cona [ed. note: icon] where is Our Lord raised from the cross and placed in a lenzolo, by the hand of Mantegna.” It is not known how the work came to Pompeii, because as early as the 16th century there is no trace of the work: it probably came to the shrine in the 19th century through donation.

In 2020, art historian Stefano De Mieri, a scholar at the Suor Orsola Benincasa University in Naples, found the work on the BeWeB portal (a database of goods preserved in Italian churches), posted with an image available online, and thought it might be the original. The painting had been listed by the Shrine of Pompeii on the site that catalogs ecclesiastical cultural goods: that photograph allowed the researcher to reconstruct the work’s history and propose its placement within the Mantegna tradition.

In particular, according to De Mieri, the work was formerly located in the apsidal chapel of San Domenico Maggiore: the scholar dates the painting to the late 15th century, and identifies a possible patron in King Frederick I of Naples, who was the uncle of Isabella d’Este. However, as mentioned, as early as the 16th century there is no more news of the painting: according to De Mieri, the work would have been damaged during a fire and undergone heavy repainting, which was then removed by the newly conducted restoration.

From De Mieri’s intuition, in fact, a large-scale investigation was launched, coordinated by the Vatican Museums and involving experts from different disciplines. The work, which was in very poor condition, was subjected to preliminary diagnostic analyses led by the Scientific Research Cabinet of the Vatican Museums under the direction of Fabio Morresi. These investigations were accompanied by a long and meticulous restoration, carried out in the Vatican Museums Laboratories under the guidance of Francesca Persegati, director of the Laboratory of Restoration of Paintings and Wooden Materials. Master restorers Lorenza D’Alessandro and Giorgio Capriotti unearthed iconographic and technical details that, according to the researchers, would strengthen the attribution to Mantegna. The Archaeological Park of Pompeii, with director Gabriel Zuchtriegel, and Luigi Gallo, head of the National Gallery of the Marches and the Marches Regional Museums Directorate, also collaborated on the research and restoration of the canvas.

“Technical and documentary analyses have clarified that the work is not a copy, but an original painting by Mantegna,” according to Fabrizio Biferali. "Its iconography is related to Renaissance models and classicism typical of the artist, with references to antiquity that make it unique in Mantegna’s production."

“There is a new title to be taken into account when, from now on, one hundred and fifty years after the arrival of the original painting, we speak of Bartolo Longo’s New Pompeii,” comments the Archbishop of Pompeii, Monsignor Tommaso Caputo, in the scholarly catalog that will accompany the exhibition, “a simple and evocative title: ’The Mantegna of Pompeii. A rediscovered masterpiece.’ It is still around a Painting that Pompeii writes a new chapter in its history. As with every find, there could be no shortage, at the source and in the later stages, of paths linked to chance and even luck. But if behind great events-and Pompeii’s rediscovered Mantegna is also something more-there is always a hidden direction, here it is easy to see in what way it was illuminated. How can we fail to note that in Mantegna’s painting next to the mourning figures, there appears a precious rosary, with coral beads and rock crystal pendant, wrapped in Magdalene’s right hand? Everything suggests that Mantegna’s painting ’belonged’ to Pompeii even before its discovery. As we welcome it, coinciding with the Jubilee Year, the rediscovered Mantegna can only indicate a new stage in the journey of the city and the church of Pompeii.”

“Called by Monsignor Caputo to view the work in March 2022,” explains Barbara Jatta, director of the Vatican Museums and Cultural Heritage of the Holy See, “we immediately understood that beneath the layers of repainting lay an extraordinary pictorial material. The restoration revealed iconographic and technical details that confirm Mantegna’s authorship, restoring to art history a masterpiece that was thought lost.”

Pompeii, attributed to Mantegna a newly discovered painting. It will go on display at the Vatican Museums

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